n  r>  A  TT  n 

b.  U  Ix  A.  1  1  U  J 


fed 


iti.i.iVKi;r.i>   r.r.i'OKi;  TIH: 


CITY  COUNCIL  AND  CITIZENS  OF  BOSTON, 


OXE    HUNDREDTH    ANNIVERSARY    OF    THK    DECLARATION 
OF     AMERICAN     INDEPENDENCE, 


JULY  4,   1876. 


HON.    ROBERT    C.    WINTHROP 


Ji  0  s  t  a  IT  : 

P1MNTED    BY   ORDER   OF   THE    CITY    COUNCIL. 

MDCCCT.XXVI. 


OEATIOIST 


DELIVERED    BEFORE    THE 


CITY  COUNCIL  AND  CITIZENS  OF  BOSTON, 


ONE    HUNDREDTH   ANNIVERSARY   OF    THE   DECLARATION 
OF    AMERICAN    INDEPENDENCE, 

JULY  4,  1876. 

BY 

HON,    EGBERT    C,    WINTHROP. 


- 

BOSTONIA 

CONDimAJ) 

1630 


8  o  s  t  0  n  : 

PRINTED   BY  ORDER  OF  THE   CITY   COUNCIL. 

MDCCCLXX  VI. 


CITY    OF    BOSTON. 


IN  COMMON  COUNCIL,  July  6,  1876. 

Resolved ,  That  the  thanks  of  the  City  Council  are  due, 
and  they  are  hereby  tendered,  to  the  Hon.  ROBERT  C.  WIN- 
THROP  for  the  very  appropriate,  interesting  and  eloquent 
oration  delivered  by  him  before  the  Municipal  Authorities  of 
this  city,  upon  the  occasion  of  the  one  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  Declaration  of  American  Independence  ;  and  that  he 
be  requested  to  furnish  a  copy  of  the  same  for  publication. 
Sent  up  for  concurrence. 

J.   Q.   A.   BEACKETT, 

President. 

IN  BOARD  OF  ALDERMEN,  July  10,  1876. 
Concurred. 

JOHN  T.    CLARK, 

Chairman. 

Approved  July  11,  1876. 

SAMUEL  C.    COBB, 

Mayor. 


SEEVICES  AT  MUSIC  HALL. 


THE  oration  was  delivered  in  Music  Hall,  which  was 
appropriately  decorated  for  the  occasion.  A  large  audience 
was  present.  After  music  by  the  Germania  Band,  the 
Mayor,  the  Hon.  SAMUEL  C.  COBB,  addressed  the  audience 
in  the  following  words  :  — 

"  The  audience  will  please  give  attention  while  prayer  is 
offered  by  the  Rev.  HENRY  W.  FOOTE." 

Eev.  HENRY  W.  FOOTE,  pastor  of  King's  Chapel,  then 
offered  the  following  prayer  :  — 

PRAYER    BY    THE    REV.    MR.    FOOTE. 

Lord  God  of  our  fathers,  whose  faithfulness  and  mer- 
cies are  unto  children's  children,  to  such  as  remember 
thy  commandments  to  do  them,  we  thank  thee  that 
we  can  come  to  thee  in  the  name,  and  as  disciples, 
of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  On  this  memorial  day,  as 
we  rejoice  before  thee  with  grateful  millions,  we  ask 
that  the  gladness  of  our  country  may  be  filled  with 
thankfulness  for  thy  mercies,  and  that  thou  wilt 
sanctify  the  proud  memories  and  the  glad  hopes  of 
this  hour.  We  bless  thee,  O  thou  who  art  the  God 
of  nations  and  of  men,  that  thou  wast  with  our 
fathers  in  the  days  of  old ;  that  thou  didst  bring  them 


6  SERVICES    AT    MUSIC    HALL. 

hither  across  the  trackless  deep,  the  seed-grain  of  a 
great  nation;  that  thou  didst  cast  out  the  heathen 
before  them  to  make  room  for  the  vine  of  thy  choos- 
ing, and  that  our  hills  are  covered  with  its  shadow 
and  the  boughs  thereof  are  like  the  goodly  cedar. 
We  thank  thee  that  thou  wast  with  our  fathers 
in  the  tune  of  battle  to  strengthen  their  hearts 
through  weary  years  of  war,  to  strengthen  their 
hands  to  smite  mighty  kings,  and  to  give  them  the 
sure  fruits  of  peace.  We  bless  thy  name  that  thou 
wast  with  them  in  the  spirit .  of  wisdom  and  under- 
standing, to  inspire  their  hearts  with  those  great 
principles  of  liberty  and  justice  which  shine  as  stars 
to  lead  all  nations  to  a  better  day;  and  we  bless  thee 
that  thou  wast  with  them  in  the  spirit  of  knowledge 
and  of  thy  fear,  to  establish  their  work  in  a  nation 
that  should  endure  for  centuries.  We  remember  be- 
fore thee  with  thankfulness  the  great  and  heroic  men 
whom  thou  didst  raise  up  to  be  their  leaders  in  the 
time  of  war,  then*  counsellors  in  the  days  of  peace; 
we  bless  thee  for  their  patience  in  adversity,  their 
soberness  in  triumph,  their  wisdom,  their  purity, 
their  patriotism,  their  faith  in  thee ;  and  we  pray  that, 
as  thy  servant  shall  speak  to  us  of  the  mighty  and 
enduring  work  which  they  wrought,  the  memorial  of 
their  virtues  may  abide  in  our  hearts,  and  the  power 
of  their  example  strengthen  us  daily  to  thy  service 
and  thy  praise.  We  thank  thee,  O  our  guardian 


JULY     4,     187G.  7 

God,  that  as   a  reunited   people,   this   nation   bows 
before  thee  in  this  memorable  hour;  that  thou  hast 
put  away  all  feeling  of  bitterness  from  between  us, 
and  from  the  ]S"orth  and  the  South,  the  East  and  the 
West,   we   come   up   together  into   thy  kingdom  of 
peace  and  love.      Bless,  we  pray  thee,  our  mother- 
country   and   her   Queen;   remove   all   memories   of 
ancient  strife  from  our  hearts,  and  grant  that  the  ties 
of  blood  and  of  faith  may  bind  us  together  through 
centuries  to  come.     Rule  thou  in  the  hearts  of  our 
rulers  in  the  spirit  of  loyalty  and  incorrupt  faithful- 
ness, and  grant  that  this  people   may  be   indeed   a 
nation  whose  God  is  the  Lord,  built  upon  that  right- 
eousness which  alone  can 'exalt  a  people.     Hear  us, 
we  pray  thee;  strengthen  us  in  thy  faith  and  love, 
and  let  thy  kingdom  come   and   thy   will   be   done. 
We  ask  it  as  disciples  of  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord. 
Amen. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  prayer,  the  Germania  Band 
played  a  selection,  after  which  the  Mayor  introduced  the 
reader  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  the  following 
words  :  — 

FELLOW-CITIZENS,  LADIES  AND  GENTLEMEN, — 

On  the  4th  of  July,  1776,  a  document  was  pub- 
lished in  Philadelphia,  solemnly  proclaiming  the  birth 
of  a  nation.  The  passage  of  time  has  made  that  dec- 
laration good,  and  has  placed  that  new-born  nation 


8  SERVICES    AT    MUSIC    HALL. 

on  a  pinnacle  of  greatness  and  power,  making  the 
date  an  era  in  the  history  of  civil  liberty  and  of  the 
world's  civilization.  It  is  fit  that  that  historic  paper 
should  be  read  on  this  Centennial  Anniversary  in  all 
the  assemblies  of  the  people  throughout  the  land. 

It  will  now  be  read  here ;  and  I  regard  it  as  a  felic- 
itous circumstance  that  its  momentous  utterances 
should  reach  us  to-day  through  the  lips  of  one  whose 
ancestor's  name  stands  subscribed  to  it,  and  who 
represents,  in  name  and  blood,  a  succession  of  illus- 
trious men  who,  hi  the  highest  stations  of  honor  and 
public  service,  have  borne  a  conspicuous  part  in  the 
national  history  and  counsels,  from  the  first  day  to 
the  last  of  the  intervening  century. 

I  present  to  you  BROOKS  ADAMS,  Esq. 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  then  read  by  MR. 
ADAMS,  after  which  the  Mayor  spoke  as  follows  :  - 

In  casting  about  for  one  who  might  worthily  grace 
this  Centennial  occasion  by  taking  the  chief  part  in  its 
observance,  we  did  not  have  to  search  long  before 
coming  to  a  name  so  identified  with  the  high  accom- 
plishments of  the  scholar,  the  orator,  and  the  states- 
man, that  the  bare  mention  of  it  was  equivalent  to  an 
election. 

We  have  considered  it  a  fortunate  coincidence  that 
the  gentleman  designated  for  this  service,  by  the 


JULY     4,     1876.  9 

qualifications  I  have  mentioned,  bears  the  name  of 
one  who  was  conspicuous  in  the  annals  of  Boston 
more  than  a  century  before  the  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence,—  the  name  of  one  who  presided  with 
honor  and  dignity  over  the  destinies  of  the  infant  city 
in  the  days  when  it  was  but  a  straggling  village  on 
the  shore  of  this  peninsula. 

We  all  know  that  neither  the  century  of  our 
national  existence,  nor  the  two  centuries  and  a  half 
that  have  passed  since  the  settlement  of  Boston, 
have  dimmed  the  lustre  of  that  name  and  lineage. 

I  present  to  you,  fellow-citizens,  the  Honorable 
ROBERT  C.  WESTTHROP. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  Mayor's  remarks,  the  Hon. 
ROBERT  C.  WINTHROP  delivered  the  following  oration. 


ORATION. 


AGAIN  and  again,  Mr.  Mayor  and  Fellow  Citizens, 
in  years  gone  by,  considerations  or  circumstances  of 
some  sort,  public  or  private,  —  I  know  not  what,  — 
have  prevented  my  acceptance  of  most  kind  and 
flattering  invitations  to  deliver  the  Oration  in  this 
my  native  city  on  the  Fourth  of  July.  On  one  of 
those  occasions,  long,  long  ago,  I  am  said  to  have 
playfully  replied  to  the  Mayor  of  that  period,  that, 
if  I  lived  to  witness  this  Centennial  Anniversary, 
I  would  not  refuse  any  service  which  might  be 
required  of  me.  That  pledge  has  been  recalled  by 
others,  if  not  remembered  by  myself,  and  by  the 
grace  of  God  I  am  here  to-day  to  fulfil  it.  I  have 
come  at  last,  in  obedience  to  your  call,  to  add  my 
name  to  the  distinguished  roll  of  those  who  have 
discharged  this  service  in  unbroken  succession  since 
the  year  1783,  when  the  date  of  a  glorious  act  of 
patriots  was  substituted  for  that  of  a  dastardly  deed 
of  hirelings,  —  the  4th  of  July  for  the  5th  of  March, 
—  as  a  day  of  annual  celebration  by  the  people  of 
Boston. 

In  rising  to  redeem  the  promise  thus  inconsider- 


12  ORATION. 

ately  given,  I  may  be  pardoned  for  not  forgetting, 
at  the  outset,  who  presided  over  the  Executive 
Council  of  Massachusetts  when  the  Declaration, 
which  has  just  been  read,  was  first  formally  and 
solemnly  proclaimed  to  the  people,  from  the  balcony 
of  yonder  Old  State  House,  on  the  18th  of  July, 
1776  ;  *  and  whose  privilege  it  was,  amid  the  shoutings 
of  the  assembled  multitude,  the  ringing  of  .the  bells, 
the  salutes  of  the  surrounding  forts,  and  the  firing 
of  thirteen  volleys  from  thirteen  successive  divisions 
of  the  Continental  regiments,  drawn  up  "in  corre- 
spondence with  the  number  of  the  American  States 
United,"  to  invoke  "  Stability  and  Perpetuity  to 
American  Independence!  God  save  our  American 
States!" 

That  invocation  was  not  in  vain.  That  wish,  that 
prayer,  has  been  graciously  granted.  We  are  here 
this  day  to  thank  God  for  it.  We  do  thank  God 
for  it  with  all  our  hearts,  and  ascribe  to  Him  all  the 
glory.  And  it  would  be  unnatural  if  I  did  not  feel 
a  more  than  common  satisfaction,  that  the  privilege 
of  giving  expression  to  your  emotions  of  joy  and 
gratitude,  at  this  hour,  should  have  been  assigned  to 
the  oldest  living  descendant  of  him  by  whom  that 
invocation  was  uttered,  and  that  prayer  breathed  up 
to  Heaven. 

And  if,  indeed,  in  addition  to  this,  —  as  you,  Mr. 

*  James  Bowdoin. 


JULY    4,    1876.  13 

Mayor,  so  kindly  urged  in  originally  inviting  me,  — 
the  name  I  bear  may  serve  in  any  sort  as  a  link 
between  the  earliest  settlement  of  New  England,  two 
centuries  and  a  half  ago,  and  the  grand  culmination 
of  that  settlement  in  this  Centennial  Epoch  of 
American  Independence,  all  the  less  may  I  be  at 
liberty  to  express  anything  of  the  compunction  or 
regret,  which  I  cannot  but  sincerely  feel,  that  so 
responsible  and  difficult  a  task  had  not  been  imposed 
upon  some  more  sufficient,  or  certainly  upon  some 
younger,  man. 

Yet  what  can  I  say?  What  can  any  one  say,  here 
or  elsewhere,  to-day,  which  shall  either  satisfy  the 
expectations  of  others,  or  meet  his  own  sense  of  the 
demands  of  such  an  occasion?  For  myself,  certainly, 
the  longer  I  have  contemplated  it,  —  the  more  deeply 
I  have  reflected  on  it,  —  so  much  the  more  hopeless 
I  have  become  of  finding  myself  able  to  £ive  any 
adequate  expression  to  its  full  significance,  its  real 
sublimity  and  grandeur.  A  hundred-fold  more  than 
when  John  Adams  wrote  to  his  wife  it  would  be  so 
forever,  it  is  an  occasion  for  "  shows,  games,  sports, 
guns,  bells,  bonfires,  and  illuminations,  from  one  end 
of  the  continent  to  the  other."  Ovations,  rather  than 
orations,  are  the  order  of  such  a  day  as  this.  Emo- 
tions like  those  which  ought  to  fill,  and  which  do  fill, 
all  our  hearts,  call  for  the  swelling  tones  of  a 
multitude,  the  cheers  of  a  mighty  crowd,  and  refuse 


14  ORATION. 

to  be  uttered  by  any  single  human  voice.  The 
strongest  phrases  seem  feeble  and  powerless  ;  the 
best  results  of  historical  research  have  the  dryness 
of  chaff  and  husks,  and  the  richest  flowers  of  rhetoric 
the  drowsiness  of  w  poppy  or  mandragora,"  in 
presence  of  the  simplest  statement  of  the  grand 
consummation  we  are  here  to  celebrate  :  —  A  Cen- 
tury of  Self-Government  Completed  !  A  hundred 
years  of  Free  Republican  Institutions  realized  and 
rounded  out  !  An  era  of  Popular  Liberty,  continued 
and  prolonged  from  generation  to  generation,  until 
to-day  it  assumes  its  full  proportions,  and  asserts  its 
rightful  place,  among  the  Ages  ! 

It  is  a  theme  from  which  an  Everett,  a  Choate,  or 
even  a  Webster,  might  have  shrunk.  But  those 
voices,  alas!  were  long  ago  hushed.  It  is  a  theme 
on  which  any  one,  living  or  dead,  might  have  been 
glad  to  follow  the  precedent  of  those  few  incom- 
parable sentences  at  Gettysburg,  on  the  19th  of 
November,  1863,  and  forbear  from  all  attempt  at 
extended  discourse.  It  is  not  for  me,  however,  to 
copy  that  unique  original,  —  nor  yet  to  shelter  my- 
self under  an  example,  which  I  should  in  vain  aspire 
to  equal. 

And,  indeed,  Fellow  Citizens,  some  formal  words 
must  be  spoken  here  to-day,  —  trite,  familiar,  com- 
monplace words,  though  they  may  be;  — some  words 
of  commemoration;  some  words  of  congratulation; 


JULY    4,    1876.  15 

some  words  of  glory  to  God,  and  of  acknowledgment 
to  man;  some  grateful  lootings  back;  some  hopeful, 
trustful,  lookings  forward,  —  these,"  I  am  sensible, 
cannot  be  spared  from  our  great  assembly  on  this 
Centennial  Day.  You  would  not  pardon  me  for 
omitting  them. 

But  where  shall  I  begin?  To  what  specific  sub- 
ject shall  I  turn  for  refuge  from  the  thousand 
thoughts  which  come  crowding  to  one's  mind  and 
rushing  to  one's  lips,  all  jealous  of  postponement,  all 
clamoring  for  utterance  before  our  Festival  shall 
close,  and  before  this  Centennial  sun  shall  set? 

The  single,  simple  Act  which  has  made  the  Fourth 
of  July  memorable  for  ever,  —  the  mere  scene  of  the 
Declaration, — would  of  itself  and  alone  supply  an 
ample  subject  for  far  more  than  the  little  hour  which 
I  may  dare  to  occupy;  and,  though  it  has  been 
described  a  hundred  times  before,  in  histories  and 
addresses,  and  in  countless  magazines  and  journals, 
it  imperatively  demands  something  more  than  a 
cursory  allusion  here  to-day,  and  challenges  our 
attention  as  it  never  did  before,  and  hardly  ever  can 
challenge  it  again. 

Go  back  with  me,  then,  for  a  few  moments  at 
least,  to  that  great  year  of  our  Lord,  and  that  great 
day  of  American  Liberty.  Transport  yourselves 
with  me,  in  imagination,  to  Philadelphia.  It  will 
require  but  little  effort  for  any  of  us  to  do  so,  for  all 


16  ORATION. 

our  hearts  are  there  already.  Yes,  we  are  all  there, 
-  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  from  the  Lakes 
to  the  Gulf,  —  we  are  all  there,  at  this  high  noon  of 
our  Nation's  birthday,  in  that  beautiful  City  of 
Brotherly  Love,  rejoicing  in  all  her  brilliant  displays, 
and  partaking  in  the  full  enjoyment  of  all  her  pag- 
eantry and  pride.  Certainly,  the  birthplace  and  the 
burial-place  of  Franklin  are  in  cordial  sympathy  at 
this  hour;  and  a  common  sentiment  of  congratulation 
and  joy,  leaping  and  vibrating  from  heart  to  heart, 
outstrips  even  the  magic  swiftness  of  magnetic  wires. 
There  are  no  chords  of  such  elastic  reach  and  such 
electric  power  as  the  heartstrings  of  a  mighty  Nation, 
touched  and  tuned,  as  all  our  heartstrings  are  to-day, 
to  the  sense  of  a  common  glory,  —  throbbing  and 
thrilling  with  a  common  exultation. 

Go  with  me,  then,  I  say,  to  Philadelphia;  —  not  to 
Philadelphia,  indeed,  as  she  is  at  this  moment,  with 
all  her  bravery  on,  with  all  her  beautiful  garments 
around  her,  with  all  the  graceful  and  generous  con- 
tributions which  so  many  other  Cities  and  other 
States  and  other  Nations  have  sent  for  her  adorn- 
ment,— not  forgetting  those  most  graceful,  most 
welcome,  most  touching  contributions,  in  view  of  the 
precise  character  of  the  occasion,  from  Old  England 
herself;  —  but  go  with  me  to  Philadelphia,  as  she  was 
just  a  hundred  years  ago.  Enter  with  me  her  noble 
Independence  Hall,  so  happily  restored  and  conse- 


JULY    4,    1876.  17 

crated  afresh  as  the  Runnymede  of  our  Nation;  and, 
as  we  enter  it,  let  us  not  forget  to  be  grateful  that  no 
demands  of  public  convenience  or  expediency  have 
called  for  the  demolition  of  that  old  State  House  of 
Pennsylvania.  Observe  and  watch  the  movements, 
listen  attentively  to  the  words,  look  steadfastly  at  the 
countenances,  of  the  men  who  compose  the  little 
Congress  assembled  there.  Braver,  wiser,  nobler 
men  have  never  been  gathered  and  grouped  under  a 
single  roof,  before  or  since,  in  any  age,  on  any  soil 
beneath  the  sun.  What  are  they  doing?  What  are 
they  daring?  Who  are  they,  thus  to  do,  and  thus  to 
dare? 

Single  out  with  me,  as  you  easily  will  at  the  first 
glance,  by  a  presence  and  a  stature  not  easily  over- 
looked or  mistaken,  the  young,  ardent,  accomplished 
Jefferson.  He  is  only  just  thirty-three  years  of  age. 
Charming  in  conversation,  ready  and  full  in  council, 
he  is  "  slow  of  tongue,"  like  the  great  Lawgiver  of 
the  Israelites,  for  any  public  discussion  or  formal 
discourse.  But  he  has  brought  with  him  the  reputa- 
tion of  wielding  what  John  Adams  well  called  "  a 
masterly  pen."  And  grandly  has  he  justified  that 
reputation.  Grandly  has  he  employed  that  pen 
already,  in  drafting  a  Paper  which  is  at  this  moment 
lying  on  the  table  and  awaiting  its  final  signature 
and  sanction. 

Three  weeks  before,  indeed,  —  on  the  previous  7th 


18  ORATION. 

of  June,  —  his  own  noble  colleague,  Richard  Henry 
Lee,  had  moved  the  Resolution,  whose  adoption,  on 
the  2d  of  July,  had  virtually  settled  the  whole  ques- 
tion. Nothing,  certainly,  more  explicit  or  emphatic 
could  have  been  wanted  for  that  Congress  itself  than 
that  Resolution,  setting  forth  as  it  did,  in  language 
of  striking  simplicity  and  brevity  and  dignity,  "  That 
these  United  Colonies  are,  and  of  right  ought  to 
be,  Free  and  Independent  States;  that  they  are 
absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  the  British  crown,  and 
that  all  political  connection  between  them  and  the 
State  of  Great  Britain  is,  and  ought  to  be,  totally 
dissolved." 

That  Resolution  was,  indeed,  not  only  comprehen- 
sive and  conclusive  enough  for  the  Congress  which 
adopted  it,  but,  I  need  not  say,  it  is  comprehensive 
and  conclusive  enough  for  us ;  and  I  heartily  wish, 
that,  in  the  century  to  come,  its  reading  might  be  sub- 
stituted for  that  of  the  longer  Declaration  which  has 
put  the  patience  of  our  audiences  to  so  severe  a  test 
for  so  many  years  past,  —  though,  happily,  not  to-day. 

But  the  form  in  which  that  Resolution  was  to  be 
announced  and  proclaimed  to  the  people  of  the 
Colonies,  and  the  reasons  by  which  it  was  to  be 
justified  before  the  world,  were  at  that  time  of  intense 
interest  and  of  momentous  importance.  No  graver 
responsibility  was  ever  devolved  upon  a  young  man 
of  thirty-three,  if,  indeed,  upon  any  man  of  any  age, 


JULY    4,    1876.  19 

than  that  of  preparing  such  a  Paper.  As  often  as  I 
have  examined  the  original  draft  of  that  Paper,  still 
extant  in  the  Archives  of  the  State  Department 
at  Washington,  and  have  observed  how  very  few 
changes  were  made,  or  even  suggested,  by  the  illus- 
trious men  associated  with  its  author  on  the  com- 
mittee for  its  preparation,  it  has  seemed  to  me  to  be 
as  marvellous  a  composition,  of  its  kind  and  for  its 
purpose,  as  the  annals  of  mankind  can  show.  The 
earliest  honors  of  this  day,  certainly,  may  well  be 
paid,  here  and  throughout  the  country,  to  the  young 
Virginian  of  "  the  masterly  pen." 

And  here,  by  the  favor  of  a  highly  valued  friend 
and  fellow-citizen,  to  whom  it  was  given  by  Jefferson 
himself  a  few  months  only  before  his  death,  I  am 
privileged  to  hold  in  my  hands,  and  to  lift  up  to  the 
eager  gaze  of  you  all,  a  most  compact  and  convenient 
little  mahogany  case,  which  bears  -this  autograph 
inscription  on  its  face,  dated  "  Monticello,  November 
18,1825:"  — 

w  Thomas  Jefferson  gives  this  Writing  Desk  to 
Joseph  Coolidge,  Junr.  as  a  memorial  of  his  affection. 
It  was  made  from  a  drawing  of  his  own,  by  Ben 
Randall,  Cabinet-maker  of  Philadelphia,  with  whom 
he  first  lodged  on  his  arrival  in  that  City  in  May, 
1776,  and  is  the  identical  one  on  which  he  wrote  the 
Declaration  of  Independence." 

"  Politics,  as  well  as  Religion,"  the  inscription  pro- 


20  ORATION. 

ceeds  to  say,  w  has  its  superstitions.  These,  gaining 
strength  with  time,  may,  one  day,  give  imaginary 
value  to  this  relic,  for  its  association  with  the  birth  of 
the  Great  Charter  of  our  Independence." 

Superstitions!  Imaginary  value!  Not  for  an 
instant  can  we  admit  such  ideas.  The  modesty  of 
the  writer  has  betrayed  even  "the  masterly  pen." 
There  is  no  imaginary  value  to  this  relic,  and  no 
superstition  is  required  to  render  it  as  precious  and 
priceless  a  piece  of  wood,  as  the  secular  cabinets  of 
the  world  have  ever  possessed,  or  ever  claimed  to 
possess.  ]STo  cabinet-maker  on  earth  will  have  a  more 
enduring  name  than  this  inscription  has  secured  to 
:?  Ben  Randall,  of  Philadelphia."  ~No  pen  will  have 
a  wider  or  more  lasting  fame  than  his  who  wrote  the 
inscription.  The  very  table  at  Runny mede,  which 
some  of  us  have  seen,  on  which  the  Magna  Charta  of 
England  is  said  to  have  been  signed  or  sealed  five 
centuries  and  a  half  before,  —  even  were  it  authen- 
ticated by  the  genuine  autographs  of  every  one  of 
those  brave  old  Barons,  with  Stephen  Langton  at 
their  head,  —  who  extorted  its  grand  pledges  and 

» 

promises  from  King  John,  —  so  soon  to  be  violated, 
—  could  hardly  exceed,  could  hardly  equal,  in  interest 
and  value,  this  little  mahogany  desk.  What  mo- 
mentous issues  for  our  country,  and  for  mankind, 
were  locked  up  in  this  narrow  drawer,  as  night  after 
night  the  rough  notes  of  preparation  for  the  Great 


JULY    4,    1876.  21 

Paper  were  laid  aside  for  the  revision  of  the  morning ! 
To  what  anxious  thoughts,  to  what  careful  study  of 
words  and  phrases,  to  what  cautious  weighing  of 
statements  and  arguments,  to  what  deep  and  almost 
overwhelming  impressions  of  responsibility,  it  must 
have  been  a  witness!  Long  may  it  find  its  appro- 
priate and  appreciating  ownership  in  the  successive 
generations  of  a  family,  in  which  the  blood  of  Vir- 
ginia and  Massachusetts  is  so  auspiciously  com- 
mingled! Should  it,  in  the  lapse  of  years,  ever, 
pass  from  the  hands  of  those  to  whom  it  will  be  so 
precious  an  heirloom,  it  could  only  have  its  fit  and 
final  place  among  the  choicest  and  most  cherished 
treasures  of  the  Nation,  with  whose  Title  Deeds  of 
Independence  it  is  so  proudly  associated ! 

But  the  young  Jefferson  is  not  alone  from  Virginia, 
on  the  day  we  are  celebrating,  in  the  Hall  which  we 
have  entered  as  imaginary  spectators  of  the  scene. 
His  venerated  friend  and  old  legal  preceptor,  — 
George  Wythe,  —  is,  indeed,  temporarily  absent  from 
his  side;  and  even  Richard  Henry  Lee,  the  original 
mover  of  the  measure,  and  upon  whom  it  might  have 
devolved  to  draw  up  the  Declaration,  has  been  called 
home  by  dangerous  illness  in  his  family,  and  is  not 
there  to  help  him.  But  "  the  gay,  good-humored  " 
Francis  Lightfoot  Lee,  a  younger  brother,  is  there. 
Benjamin  Harrison,  the  father  of  our  late  President 
Harrison,  is  there,  and  has  just  reported  the  Decla- 


22  ORATION. 

ration  from  the  Committee  of  the  Whole,  of  which 
he  was  Chairman.  The  "mild  and  philanthropic" 
Carter  Braxton  is  there,  in  the  place  of  the  lamented 
Peyton  Randolph,  the  first  President  of  the  Con- 
tinental Congress,  who  had  died,  to  the  sorrow  of 
the  whole  country,  six  or  seven  months  before.  And 
the  noble-hearted  Thomas  Nelson  is  there,  —  the 
largest  subscriber  to  the  generous  relief  sent  from 
Yirginia  to  Boston  during  the  sore  distress  oc- 
casioned by  the  shutting  up  of  our  Port,  and  who  was 
the  mover  of  those  Instructions  in  the  Convention  of 
Yirginia,  passed  on  the  15th  of  May,  under  which 
Richard  Henry  Lee  offered  the  original  Resolution  of 
Independence,  on  the  7th  of  June. 

I  am  particular,  Fellow  Citizens,  in  giving  to  the 
Old  Dominion  the  foremost  place  in  this  rapid  survey 
of  the  Fourth  of  July,  1776,  and  in  naming  every  one 
of  her  delegates  who  participated  in  that  day's  doings; 
for  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say,  that  the  destinies  of 
our  country,  at  that  period,  hung  and  hinged  upon 
her  action,  and  upon  the  action  of  her  great  and 
glorious  sons.  Without  Yirginia,  as  we  must  all 
acknowledge,  —  without  her  Patrick  Henry  among 
the  people,  her  Lees  and  Jefferson  in  the  forum,  and 
her  Washington  in  the  field,  —  I  will  not  say,  that 
the  cause  of  American  Liberty  and  American  In- 
dependence must  have  been  ultimately  defeated,  - 
no,  no;  there  was  no  ultimate  defeat  for  that  cause  in 


JULY    4,    1876.  28 

the  decrees  of  the  Most  High !  —  but  it  must  have 
been  delayed,  postponed,  perplexed,  and  to  many  eyes 
and  to  many  hearts  rendered  seemingly  hopeless.  It 
was  Union  which  assured  our  Independence,  and  there 
could  have  been  no  Union  without  the  influence  and 
cooperation  of  that  great  leading  Southern  Colony. 
To-day,  then,  as  we  look  back  over  the  wide  gulf  of 
a  century,  we  are  ready  and  glad  to  forget  every 
thing  of  alienation,  every  thing  of  contention  and 
estrangement  which  has  intervened,  and  to  hail  her 
once  more,  as  our  Fathers  in  Faheuil  Hall  hailed  her, 
in  1775,  as  "  our  noble,  patriotic  sister  Colony, 
Virginia." 

I  may  not  attempt,  on  this  occasion,  to  speak  with 
equal  particularity  of  all  the  other  delegates  whom  we 
see  assembled  in  that  immortal  Congress.  Their 
names  are  all  inscribed  where  they  can  never  be  oblit- 
erated, never  be  forgotten.  Yet  some  others  of  them 
so  challenge  our  attention  and  rivet  our  gaze,  as  we 
look  in  upon  that  old  time-honored  Hall,  that  I  cannot 
pass  to  other  topics  without  a  brief  allusion  to  them. 

Who  can  overlook  or  mistake  the  sturdy  front  of 
Roger  Sherman,  whom  we  are  proud  to  recall  as  a 
native  of  Massachusetts,  though  now  a  delegate  from 
Connecticut,  —  that  "Old  Puritan,"  as  John  Adams 
well  said,  "  as  honest  as  an  angel,  and  as  firm  in  the 
cause  of  American  Independence  as  Mount  Atlas,"  — 
represented  most  worthily  to-day  by  the  distinguished 


24  ORATION. 

Orator  of  the  Centennial  at  Philadelphia,  as  well  as 
by  more  than  one  distinguished  grandson  in  our  own 
State? 

Who  can  overlook  or  mistake  the  stalwart  figure  of 
Samuel  Chase,  of  Maryland,  "  of  ardent  passions,  of 
strong  mind,  of  domineering  temper,  of  a  turbulent 
and  boisterous  life,"  who  had  helped  to  burn  in  effigy 
the  Maryland  Stamp  Distributor  eleven  years  before, 
and  who,  we  are  told  by  one  who  knew  what  he  was 
saying,  "  must  ever  be  conspicuous  in  the  catalogue 
of  that  Congress  "  ? 

His  milder  and  more  amiable  colleague,  Charles 
Carroll,  was  engaged  at  that  moment  in  pressing  the 
cause  of  Independence  on  the  hesitating  Convention 
of  Maryland,  at  Annapolis;  and  though,  as  we  shall 
see,  he  signed  the  Declaration  on  the  2d  of  August, 
and  outlived  all  his  compeers  on  that  roll  of  glory,  he 
is  missing  from  the  illustrious  band  as  we  look  in 
upon  them  this  morning.  I  cannot  but  remember 
that  it  was  my  privilege  to  see  and  know  that  vener- 
able person  in  my  early  manhood.  Entering  his 
drawing-room,  nearly  five-and-forty  years  ago,  I 
found  him  reposing  on  a  sofa  and  covered  with  a 
shawl,  and  was  not  even  aware  of  his  presence,  so 
shrunk  and  shrivelled  by  the  lapse  of  years  was  his 
originally  feeble  frame.  Quot  librae  in  duce  summo! 
But  the  little  heap  on  the  sofa  was  soon  seen  stirring, 
and,  rousing  himself  from  his  mid-day  nap,  he  rose 


JULY    4,    1876.  25 

and  greeted  me  with  a  courtesy  and  a  grace  which  I 
can  never  forget.  In  the  ninety-fifth  year  of  his  age, 
as  he  was,  and  within  a  few  months  of  his  death,  it  is 
not  surprising  that  there  should  be  little  for  me  to 
recall  of  that  interview,  save  his  eager  inquiries  about 
James  Madison,  whom  I  had  just  visited  at  Montpe- 
lier,  and  his  affectionate  allusions  to  John  Adams,  who 
had  gone  before  him;  and  save,  too,  the  exceeding 
satisfaction  for  myself  of  having  seen  and  pressed  the 
hand  of  the  last  surviving  signer  of  the  Declaration. 

But  Caesar  Rodney,  who  had  gone  home  on  the 
same  patriotic  errand  which  had  called  Carroll  to 
Maryland,  had  happily  returned  in  season,  and  had 
come  in,  two  days  before,  "  in  his  boots  and  spurs," 
to  give  the  casting  vote  for  Delaware  in  favor  of 
Independence. 

And  there  is  Arthur  Middleton,  of  South  Carolina, 
the  bosom  friend  of  our  own  Hancock,  and  who  is 
associated  with  him  under  the  same  roof  in  those  ele- 
gant hospitalities  which  helped  to  make  men  know 
and  understand  and  trust  each  other.  And  with  him 
you  may  see  and  almost  hear  the  eloquent  Edward 
Rutledge,  who  not  long  before  had  united  with 
John  Adams  and  Richard  Henry  Lee  in  urging  on 
the  several  Colonies  the  great  measure  of  establishing 
permanent  governments  at  once  for  themselves,  —  a 
decisive  step  which  we  may  not  forget  that  South 
Carolina  was  among  the  very  earliest  in  taking.  She 


26  ORATION. 

took  it,  however,  with  a  reservation,  and  her  dele- 
gates were  not  quite  ready  to  vote  for  Independence, 
when  it  was  first  proposed. 

But  Richard  Stockton,  of  New  Jersey,  must  not 
be  unmarked  or  unmentioned  in  our  rapid  survey, 
more  especially  as  it  is  a  matter  of  record  that  his 
original  doubts  about  the  measure,  which  he  is  now 
bravely  supporting,  had  been  dissipated  and  dispelled 
"  by  the  irresistible  and  conclusive  arguments  of 
John  Adams." 

And  who  requires  to  be  reminded  that  our  w  Great 
Bostonian,"  Benjamin  Franklin,  is  at  his  post  to-day, 
representing  his  adopted  Colony  with  less  support 
than  he  could  wish,  —  for  Pennsylvania,  as  well  as 
New  York,  was  sadly  divided,  and  at  times  almost 
paralyzed  by  her  divisions,  —  but  with  patriotism  and 
firmness  and  prudence  and  sagacity  and  philosophy 
and  wit  and  common-sense  and  courage  enough  to 
constitute  a  whole  delegation,  and  to  represent  a 
whole  Colony,  by  himself !  He  is  the  last  man  of 
that  whole  glorious  group  of  Fifty,  —  or  it  may  have 
been  one  or  two  more,  or  one  or  two  less,  than  fifty, 
-  who  requires  to  be  pointed  out,  in  order  to  be  the 
observed  of  all  observers. 

But  I  must  not  stop  here.  It  is  fit,  above  all  other 
things,  that,  while  we  do  justice  to  the  great  actors 
in  this  scene  from  other  Colonies,  we  should  not 
overlook  the  delegates  from  our  own  Colony.  It  is 


JULY    4,    1876.  27 

fit,  above  all  things,  that  we  should  recall  something 
more  than  the  names  of  the  men  who  represented 
Massachusetts  in  that  great  Assembly,  and  who 
boldly  affixed  their  signatures,  in  her  behalf,  to  that 
immortal  Instrument. 

Was  there  ever  a  more  signal  distinction  vouch- 
safed to  mortal  man,  than  that  which  was  won  and 
worn  by  John  Hancock  a  hundred  years  ago  to-day? 
Not  altogether  a  great  man;  not  without  some  grave 
defects  of  character;  — we  remember  nothing  at  this 
hour  save  his  Presidency  of  the  Congress  of  the 
Declaration,  and  his  bold  and  noble  signature  to  our 
Magna  Charta.  Behold  him  in  the  chair  which  is 
still  standing  in  its  old  place,  —  the  very  same  chair 
in  which  "Washington  was  to  sit,  eleven  years  later, 
as  President  of  the  Convention  which  framed  the 
Constitution  of  the  United  States;  the  very  same 
chair,  emblazoned  on  the  back  of  which  Franklin  was 
to  descry  "  a  rising,  and  not  a  setting  sun,"  when 
that  Constitution  had  been  finally  adopted,  —  behold 
him,  the  young  Boston  merchant,  not  yet  quite  forty 
years  of  age,  not  only  with  a  princely  fortune  at 
stake,  but  with  a  price  at  that  moment  on  his  own 
head,  sitting  there  to-day  in  all  the  calm  composure 
and  dignity  which  so  peculiarly  characterized  him, 
and  which  nothing  seemed  able  to  relax  or  ruffle. 
He  had  chanced  to  come  on  to  the  Congress  during 
the  previous  year,  just  as  Peyton  Randolph  had  been 


28  ORATION". 

compelled  to  relinquish  his  seat  and  go  home, — return- 
ing only  to  die;  and,  having  been  unexpectedly  elected 
as  his  successor,  he  hesitated  about  taking  the  seat. 
But  grand  old  Benjamin  Harrison,  of  Virginia,  we  are 
told,  was  standing  beside  him,  and  with  the  ready 
good  humor  that  loved  a  joke  even  in  the  Senate 
House,  he  seized  the  modest  candidate  in  his  athletic 
arms,  and  placed  him  in  the  presidential  chair;  then, 
turning  to  some  of  the  members  around,  he  ex- 
claimed: "We  will  show  Mother  Britain  how  little 
we  care  for  her,  by  making  a  Massachusetts  man  our 
President,  whom  she  has  excluded  from  pardon  bv  a 
public  proclamation." 

Behold  him!  He  has  risen  for  a  moment.  He  has 
put  the  question.  The  Declaration  is  adopted.  It  is 
already  late  in  the  evening,  and  all  formal  promulga- 
tion of  the  day's  doings  must  be  postponed.  After  a 
grace  of  three  days,  the  air  will  be  vibrating  with  the 
joyous  tones  of  the  Old  Bell  in  the  cupola  over  his 
head,  proclaiming  Liberty  to  all  mankind,  and  with 
the  responding  acclamations  of  assembled  multitudes. 
Meantime,  for  him,  however,  a  simple  but  solemn 
duty  remains  to  be  discharged.  The  paper  is  before 
him.  You  may  see  the  very  table  on  which  it  was 
laid,  and  the  very  inkstand  which  awaits  his  use. 
3^o  hesitation  now.  He  dips  his  pen,  and  with  an 
untrembling  hand  proceeds  to  execute  a  signature, 
which  would  seem  to  have  been  studied  in  the 


JULY    4,    1876.  29 

schools,  and  practised  in  the  counting-room,  and 
shaped  and  modelled  day  by  day  in  the  correspond- 
ence of  mercantile  and  political  manhood,  until  it 
should  be  meet  for  the  authentication  of  some  immor- 
tal act;  and  which,  as  Webster  grandly  said,  has 
made  his  name  as  imperishable,  "  as  if  it  were  written 
between  Orion  and  the  Pleiades." 

Under  that  signature,  with  only  the  attestation  of 
a  secretary,  the  Declaration  goes  forth  to  the  Ameri- 
can people,  to  be  printed  in  their  journals,  to  be 
proclaimed  in  their  streets,  to  be  published  from  their 
pulpits,  to  be  read  at  the  head  of  their  armies,  to  be 
incorporated  for  ever  into  their  history.  The  British 
forces,  driven  away  from  Boston,  are  now  landing  on 
Staten  Island,  and  the  reverses  of  Long  Island  are 
just  awaiting  us.  They  were  met  by  the  promulga- 
tion of  this  act  of  offence  and  defiance  to  all  royal 
authority.  But  there  was  no  individual  responsibility 
for  that  act,  save  in  the  signature  of  John  Hancock, 
President,  and  Charles  Thomson,  Secretary.  ]S"ot 
until  the  2d  of  August  was  our  young  Boston  mer- 
chant relieved  from  the  perilous,  the  appalling  gran- 
deur of  standing  sole  sponsor  for  the  revolt  of 
Thirteen  Colonies  and  Three  Millions  of  people. 
Sixteen  or  seventeen  years  before,  as  a  very  young 
man,  he  had  made  a  visit  to  London,  and  was  present 
at  the  burial  of  George  II.,  and  at  the  coronation  of 
George  III.  He  is  now  not  only  the  witness  but  the 


30  ORATION. 

instrument,  and  in  some  sort  the  impersonation,  of  a 
far  more  substantial  change  of  dynasty  on  his  own 
soil,  the  burial  of  royalty  under  any  and  every  title, 
and  the  coronation  of  a  Sovereign,  whose  sceptre  has 
already  endured  for  a  century,  and  whose  sway  has 
already  embraced  three  times  thirteen  States,  and 
more  than  thirteen  times  three  millions  of  people ! 

Ah,  if  his  quaint,  picturesque,  charming  old  man- 
sion-house, so  long  the  gem  of  Beacon  Street,  could 
have  stood  till  this  day,  our  Centennial  decorations 
and  illuminations  might  haply  have  so  marked,  and 
sanctified,  and  glorified  it,  that  the  rage  of  recon- 
struction would  have  passed  over  it  still  longer,  and 
spared  it  for  the  reverent  gaze  of  other  generations. 
But  his  own  name  and  fame  are  secure;  and,  what- 
ever may  have  been  the  foibles  or  faults  of  his  later 
years,  to-day  we  will  remember  that  momentous  and 
matchless  signature,  and  him  who  made  it,  with  noth- 
ing but  respect,  admiration  and  gratitude. 

But  Hancock,  as  I  need  not  remind  you,  was  not 
the  only  proscribed  patriot  who  represented  Massa- 
chusetts at  Philadelphia  on  the  day  we  are  commem- 
orating. His  associate  in  General  Gage's  memorable 
exception  from  pardon  is  close  at  his  side.  He  who, 
as  a  Harvard  College  student,  in  1743,  had  main- 
tained the  affirmative  of  the  Thesis,  "  Whether  it  be 
lawful  to  resist  the  Supreme  Magistrate,  if  the  Com- 
monwealth cannot  otherwise  be  preserved,"  and  who 


JULY    4,    1876.  31 

during  those  whole  three-and-thirty  years  since  had 
been  training  up  himself  and  training  up  his  fellow- 
countrymen  in  the  nurture  and  admonition  of  the 
Lord  and  of  Liberty ;  —  he  who  had  replied  to  Gage's 
recommendation  to  him  to  make  his  peace  with  the 
King,  "  I  trust  I  have  long  since  made  my  peace  with 
the  King  of  Kings,  and  no  personal  considerations 
shall  induce  me  to  abandon  the  righteous  cause  of 
my  country ; "  —  he  who  had  drawn  up  the  Boston 
Instructions  to  her  Representatives  in  the  General 
Court,  adopted  at  Faneuil  Hall,  on  the  24th  of  May, 
1764, —  the  earliest  protest  against  the  Stamp  Act,  and 
one  of  the  grandest  papers  of  our  whole  Revolutionary 
period ;  —  he  who  had  instituted  and  organized  those 
Committees  of  Correspondence,  without  which  we 
could  have  had  no  united  counsels,  no  concerted 
action,  no  union,  no  success ;  —  he  who,  after  the 
massacre  of  March  5,  1770,  had  demanded  so  heroic- 
ally the  removal  from  Boston  of  the  British  regi- 
ments, ever  afterwards  known  as  "  Sam.  Adams's 
regiments,"  —  telling  the  Governor  to  his  face,  with 
an  emphasis  and  an  eloquence  which  were  hardly 
ever  exceeded  since  Demosthenes  stood  on  the  Bema, 
or  Paul  on  Mars  Hill,  "  If  the  Lieutenant-governor,  or 
Colonel  Dalrymple,  or  both  together,  have  authority 
to  remove  one  regiment,  they  have  authority  to 
remove  two;  and  nothing  short  of  the  total  evacua- 
tion of  the  Town,  by  all  the  regular  troops,  will 


32  ORATION. 

satisfy  the  public  mind  or  preserve  the  peace  of  the 
Province;"  -he,  "the  Palinurus  of  the  American 
Revolution,"  as  Jefferson  once  called  him,  but  — 
thank  Heaven !  —  a  Palinurus  who  was  never  put  to 
sleep  at  the  helm,  never  thrown  into  the  sea,  but  who 
is  still  watching  the  compass  and  the  stars,  and  steer- 
ing the  ship  as  she  enters  at  last  the  haven  he  has  so 
long  yearned  for:  —  the  veteran  Samuel  Adams,— 
the  disinterested,  inflexible,  incorruptible  statesman, 
-  is  second  to  no  one  in  that  whole  Congress,  hardly 
second  to  any  one  in  the  whole  thirteen  Colonies,  in 
his  claim  to  the  honors  and  grateful  acknowledg- 
ments of  this  hour.  We  have  just  gladly  hailed  his 
statue  on  its  way  to  the  capitol. 

ISTor  must  the  name  of  Robert  Treat  Paine  be 
forgotten  among  the  five  delegates  of  Massachusetts 
in  that  Hall  of  Independence,  a  hundred  years  ago 
to-day;  —  an  able  lawyer,  a  learned  judge,  a  just 
man;  connected  by  marriage,  if  I  mistake  not,  Mr. 
Mayor,  with  your  own  gallant  grandfather,  General 
Cobb,  and  who  himself  inherited  the  blood  and  illus- 
trated the  virtues  of  the  hero  and  statesman  whose 
name  he  bore,  —  Robert  Treat,  a  most  distinguished 
officer  in  King  Philip's  War,  and  afterwards  a  worthy 
Governor  of  Connecticut. 

And  with  him,  too,  is  Elbridge  Gerry,  the  very 
youngest  member  of  the  whole  Continental  Congress, 
just  thirty-two  years  of  age,  —  who  had  been  one  of 


JULY    4,    1876.  33 

the  chosen  friends  of  our  proto-martyr,  General 
Joseph  Warren;  who  was  with  Warren,  at  Water- 
town,  the  very  last  night  before  he  fell  at  Bunker 
Hill,  and  into  whose  ear  that  heroic  volunteer  had 
whispered  those  memorable  words  of  presentiment, 
"  Dulce  et  decorum  est  pro  patria  mori ; "  who  lived 
himself  to  serve  his  Commonwealth  and  the  Nation, 
ardently  and  efficiently,  at  home  and  abroad,  ever  in 
accordance  with  his  own  patriotic  injunction,  —  "It 
is  the  duty  of  every  citizen,  though  he  may  have  but 
one  day  to  live,  to  devote  that  day  to  the  service  of 
his  country,"  —  and  died  on  his  way  to  his  post  as 
Vice-President  of  the  United  States. 

One  more  name  is  still  to  be  pronounced.  One 
more  star  of  that  little  Massachusetts  cluster  is  still 
to  be  observed  and  noted.  And  it  is  one,  which,  on 
the  precise  occasion  we  commemorate,  —  one,  which 
during  those  great  days  of  June  and  July,  1776,  on 
which  the  question  of  Independence  was  immediately 
discussed  and  decided,  —  had  hardly  "  a  fellow  in  the 
firmament,"  and  which  was  certainly  "the  bright, 
particular  star  "  of  our  own  constellation.  You  will 
all  have  anticipated  me  in  naming  John  Adams. 
Beyond  all  doubt,  his  is  the  Massachusetts  name 
most  prominently  associated  with  the  immediate  Day 
we  celebrate. 

Others  may  have  been  earlier  or  more  active  than 
he  in  preparing  the  way.  Others  may  have  labored 


34  ORATION. 

longer  and  more  zealously  to  instruct  the  popular 
mind  and  inflame  the  popular  heart  for  the  great  step 
which  was  now  to  be  taken.  Others  may  have  been 
more  ardent,  as  they  unquestionably  were  more 
prominent,  in  the  various  stages  of  the  struggle 
against  Writs  of  Assistance,  and  Stamp  Acts,  and 
Tea  Taxes.  But  from  the  date  of  that  marvellous 
letter  of  his  to  Nathan  Webb,  in  1755,  when  he  was 
less  than  twenty  years  old,  he  seems  to  have  forecast 
the  destinies  of  this  continent  as  few  other  men  of 
any  age,  at  that  day,  had  done;  while  from  the 
moment  at  which  the  Continental  Congress  took  the 
question  of  Independence  fairly  in  hand,  as  a  question 
to  be  decided  and  acted  on,  until  they  had  brought  it 
to  its  final  issue  in  the  Declaration,  his  was  the  voice, 
above  and  before  all  other  voices,  which  commanded 
the  ears,  convinced  the  minds,  and  inspired  the  hearts 
of  his  colleagues,  and  triumphantly  secured  the 
result. 

I  need  not  speak  of  him  in  other  relations  or  in 
after  years.  His  long  life  of  varied  and  noble  service 
to  his  country,  in  almost  every  sphere  of  public  duty, 
domestic  and  foreign,  belongs  to  history;  and  history 
has  long  ago  taken  it  in  charge.  But  the  testimony 
which  was  borne  to  his  grand  efforts  and  utterances, 
by  the  author  of  the  Declaration  himself,  can  never 
be  gainsaid,  never  be  weakened,  never  be  forgotten. 
That  testimony,  old  as  it  is,  familiar  as  it  is,  belongs 


JULY    4,    1876.  35 

to  this  day.  John  Adains  will  be  remembered  and 
honored  for  ever,  in  every  true  American  heart,  as 
the  acknowledged  Champion  of  Independence  in  the 
Continental  Congress,  —  "  coming  out  with  a  power 
which  moved  us  from  our  seats,"  —  "  our  Colossus  on 
the  floor." 

And  when  we  recall  the  circumstances  of  his 
death,  —  the  year,  the  day,  the  hour,  —  and  the  last 
words  upon  his  dying  lips,  "  Independence  for  ever," 
-  who  can  help  feeling  that  there  was  some  myste- 
rious tie  holding  back  his  heroic  spirit  from  the  skies, 
until  it  should  be  set  free  amid  the  exulting  shouts  of 
his  country's  first  National  Jubilee! 

But  not  his  heroic  spirit  alone! 

In  this  rapid  survey  of  the  men  assembled  at 
Philadelphia  a  hundred  years  ago  to-day,  I  began 
with  Thomas  Jefferson,  of  Virginia,  and  I  end  with 
John  Adams,  of  Massachusetts;  and  no  one  can 
hesitate  to  admit  that,  under  God,  they  were  the  very 
alpha  and  omega  of  that  day's  doings,  —  the  pen  and 
the  tongue,  —  the  masterly  author,  and  the  no  less 
masterly  advocate,  of  the  Declaration. 

And  now,  my  friends,  what  legend  of  ancient 
Rome,  or  Greece,  or  Egypt,  what  myth  of  prehistoric 
mythology,  what  story  of  Herodotus,  or  fable  of 
-ZEsop,  or  metamorphosis  of  Ovid,  would  have  seemed 
more  fabulous  and  mythical,  —  did  it  rest  on  any 
remote  or  doubtful  tradition,  and  had  not  so  many  of 


36  ORATION. 

us  lived  to  be  startled,  and  thrilled  and  awed  by  it,  - 
than  the  fact,  that  these  two  men,  under  so  many 
different  circumstances  and  surroundings,  of  age  and 
constitution  and  climate,  widely  distant  from  each 
other,  living  alike  in  quiet  neighborhoods,  remote 
from  the  smoke  and  stir  of  cities,  and  long  before 
railroads  or  telegraphs  had  made  any  advances 
towards  the  annihilation  or  abridgment  of  space, 
should  have  been  released  to  their  rest  and  sum- 
moned to  the  skies,  not  only  on  the  same  day,  but 
that  day  the  Fourth  of  July,  and  that  Fourth  of  July 
the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  that  great  Declaration 
which  they  had  contended  for  and  carried  through 
so  triumphantly  side  by  side ! 

What  an  added  emphasis  Jefferson  would  have 
given  to  his  inscription  on  this  little  desk,  —  "  Poli- 
tics, as  well  as  Religion,  has  its  superstitions,"  — 
could  he  have  foreseen  the  close  even  of  his  own  life, 
much  more  the  simultaneous  close  of  these  two  lives, 
on  that  Day  of  days!  Oh,  let  me  not  admit  the  idea 
of  superstition!  Let  me  rather  reverently  say,  as 
Webster  said  at  the  time,  in  that  magnificent  Eulogy 
which  left  so  little  for  any  one  else  to  say  as  to  the 
lives  or  deaths  of  Adams  and  Jefferson:  "As  their 
lives  themselves  were  the  gifts  of  Providence,  who  is 
not  willing  to  recognize  in  their  happy  termination, 
as  well  as  in  their  long  continuance,  proofs  that  our 
country  and  its  benefactors  are  objects  of  His  care?" 


JULY     4,    1876.  37 

And  now  another  Fifty  Years  have  passed  away, 
and  we  are  holding  our  high  Centennial  Festival ;  and 
still  that  most  striking,  most  impressive,  most  memor- 
able coincidence  in  all  American  history,  or  even  in 
the  authentic  records  of  mankind,  is  without  a  visible 
monument  anywhere! 

In  the  interesting  little  city  of  Weimar,  renowned 
as  the  resort  and  residence  of  more  than  one  of  the 
greatest  philosophers  and  poets  of  Germany,  many  a 
traveller  must  have  seen  and  admired  the  charming 
statues  of  Goethe  and  Schiller,  standing  side  by  side 
and  hand  in  hand,  on  a  single  pedestal,  and  offering, 
as  it  were,  the  laurel  wreath  of  literary  priority  or 
pre-eminence  to  each  other.  Few  nobler  works  of 
art,  in  conception  or  execution,  can  be  found  on  the 
Continent  of  Europe.  And  what  could  be  a  worthier 
or  juster  commemoration  of  the  marvellous  coinci- 
dence of  which  I  have  just  spoken,  and  of  the  men 
who  were  the  subjects  of  it,  and  of  the  Declaration 
with  which,  alike  in  their  lives  and  in  their  deaths, 
they  are  so  peculiarly  and  so  signally  associated, 
than  just  such  a  Monument,  with  the  statues  of 
Adams  and  Jefferson,  side  by  side  and  hand  in  hand, 
upon  the  same  base,  pressing  upon  each  other,  in 
mutual  acknowledgment  and  deference,  the  victor 
palm  of  a  triumph  for  which  they  must  ever  be  held 
in  common  and  equal  honor!  It  would  be  a  new  tie 
between  Massachusetts  and  Virginia.  It  would  be  a 


38  ORATION. 

new  bond  of  that  Union  which  is  the  safety  and  the 
glory  of  both.  It  would  be  a  new  pledge  of  that 
restored  good-will  between  the  North  and  South, 
which  is  the  herald  and  harbinger  of  a  Second  Cen- 
tury of  National  Independence.  It  would  be  a  fit 
recognition  of  the  great  Hand  of  God  in  our  history ! 
At  all  events,  it  is  one  of  the  crying  omissions 
and  neglects  which  reproach  us  all  this  day,  that 
"glorious  old  John  Adams"  is  without  any  propor- 
tionate public  monument  in  the  State  of  which  he  was 
one  of  the  very  grandest  citizens  and  sons,  and  in 
whose  behalf  he  rendered  such  inestimable  services  to 
his  country.  It  is  almost  ludicrous  to  look  around 
and  see  who  has  been  commemorated,  and  he  neg- 
lected! He  might  be  seen  standing  alone,  as  he 
knew  so  well  how  to  stand  alone  in  life.  He  might 
be  seen  grouped  with  his  illustrious  son,  only  second 
to  himself  in  his  claims  on  the  omitted  posthumous 
honors  of  his  native  State.  Or,  if  the  claim  of  noble 
women  to  such  commemorations  were  ever  to  be 
recognized  on  our  soil,  he  might  be  lovingly  grouped 
with  that  incomparable  wife,  from  whom  he  was  so 
often  separated  by  public  duties  and  personal  dangers, 
and  whose  familiar  correspondence  with  him,  and  his 
with  her,  furnishes  a  picture  of  fidelity  and  affection, 
and  of  patriotic  zeal  and  courage  and  self-sacrifice, 
almost  without  a  parallel  in  our  Revolutionary 
Annals. 


JULY    4,    1876.  39 

But  before  all  other  statues,  let  us  have  those  of 
Adams  and  Jefferson  on  a  single  block,  as  they  stood 
together  just  a  hundred  years  ago  to-day,  —  as  they 
were  translated  together  just  fifty  years  ago  to-day: 
-  foremost  for  Independence  in  their  lives,  and  in 
their  deaths  not  divided!  Next,  certainly,  to  the 
completion  of  the  National  Monument  to  Washington, 
at  the  Capital,  this  double  statue  of  this  "  double 
star  "  of  the  Declaration  calls  for  the  contributions  of 
a  patriotic  people.  It  would  have  something  of 
special  appropriateness  as  the  first  gift  to  that  Boston 
Park,  which  is  to  date  from  this  Centennial  Period. 

I  have  felt,  Mr.  Mayor  and  Fellow  Citizens,  as  I 
am  sure  you  all  must  feel,  that  the  men  who  were 
gathered  at  Philadelphia  a  hundred  years  ago  to-day, 
familiar  as  their  names  and  their  story  may  be,  to 
ourselves  and  to  all  the  world,  had  an  imperative 
claim  to  the  first  and  highest  honors  of  this  Centen- 
nial Anniversary.  But,  having  paid  these  passing 
tributes  to  their  memory,  I  hasten  to  turn  to  consid- 
erations less  purely  personal. 

The  Declaration  has  been  adopted,  and  has  been 
sent  forth  in  a  hundred  journals,  and  on  a  thousand 
broadsides,  to  every  camp  and  council  chamber,  to 
every  town  and  village  and  hamlet  and  fireside, 
throughout  the  Colonies.  What  was  it?  What  did 
it  declare?  What  was  its  rightful  interpretation 


40  ORATION. 

and  intention?  Under  what  circumstances  was  it 
adopted?  What  did  it  accomplish  for  ourselves  and 
for  mankind? 

A  recent  and  powerful  writer  on  "  The  Growth  of 
the  English  Constitution,"  whom  I  had  the  pleasure 
of  meeting  at  the  Commencement  of  Old  Cambridge 
University  two  years  ago,  says  most  strikingly  and 
most  justly:  "There  are  certain  great  political  docu- 
ments, each  of  which  forms  a  landmark  in  our  politi- 
cal history.  There  is  the  Great  Charter,  The  Petition 
of  Rights,  the  Bill  of  Eights."  "  But  not  one  of 
them,"  he  adds,  "  gave  itself  out  as  the  enactment  of 
any  thing  new.  All  claimed  to  set  forth,  with  new 
strength,  it  might  be,  and  with  new  clearness,  those 
rights  of  Englishmen,  which  were  already  old."  The 
same  remark  has  more  recently  been  incorporated 
into  w  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People."  w  In 
itself,"  says  the  writer  of  that  admirable  little  volume, 
"  the  Charter  was  no  novelty,  nor  did  it  claim  to 
establish  any  new  Constitutional  principles.  The 
Charter  of  Henry  I.  formed  the  basis  of  the  whole; 
and  the  additions  to  it  are,  for  the  most  part,  formal 
recognitions  of  the  judicial  and  administrative  changes 
introduced  by  Henry  II." 

So,  substantially,  —  so,  almost  precisely,  —  it  may 
be  said  of  the  Great  American  Charter,  which  was 
drawn  up  by  Thomas  Jefferson  on  the  precious  little 
desk  which  lies  before  me.  It  made  no  pretensions 


JULY    4,    1876.  41 

to  novelty.  The  men  of  1776  were  not  in  any  sense, 
certainly  not  in  any  seditious  sense,  greedy  of  novel- 
ties, -  ^avidi  novai-um  rerum."  They  had  claimed 
nothing  new.  They  desired  nothing  new.  Their  old 
original  rights  as  Englishmen  were  all  that  they 
sought  to  enjoy,  and  those  they  resolved  to  vindicate. 
It  was  the  invasion  and  denial  of  those  old  rights  of 
Englishmen,  which  they  resisted  and  revolted  from. 

As  our  excellent  fellow-citizen,  Mr.  Dana,  so  well 
said  publicly  at  Lexington,  last  year, —  and  as  we 
should  all  have  been  glad  to  have  him  in  the  way  of 
repeating  quietly  in  London,  this  year,  —  "We  were 
not  the  Revolutionists.  The  King  and  Parliament 
were  the  Revolutionists.  They  were  the  radical 
innovators.  We  were  the  conservators  of  existing 
institutions." 

3sTo  one  has  forgotten,  or  can  ever  forget,  how 
early  and  how  emphatically  all  this  was  admitted  by 
some  of  the  grandest  statesmen  and  orators  of 
England  herself.  It  was  the  attempt  to  subvert  our 
rights  as  Englishmen,  which  roused  Chatham  to  some 
of  his  most  majestic  efforts.  It  was  the  attempt  to 
subvert  our  rights  as  Englishmen,  which  kindled 
Burke  to  not  a  few  of  his  most  brilliant  utterances. 
It  was  the  attempt  to  subvert  our  rights  as  English- 
men, which  inspired  Barre  and  Conway  and  Camden 
with  appeals  and  arguments  and  phrases,  which  will 
keep  their  memories  fresh  when  all  else  associated 


42  ORATION. 

with  them  is  forgotten.  The  names  of  all  three  of 
them,  as  you  well  know,  have  long  been  the  cherished 
designations  of  American  Towns. 

They  all  perceived  and  understood  that  we  were 
contending  for  English  rights,  and  against  the  viola- 
tion of  the  great  principles  of  English  liberty.  Nay, 
not  a  few  of  them  perceived  and  understood  that  we 
were  fighting  their  battles  as  well  as  our  own,  and 
that  the  liberties  of  Englishmen  upon  their  own  soil 
were  virtually  involved  in  our  cause  and  in  our 
contest. 

There  is  a  most  notable  letter  of  Josiah  Quincy, 
Jr.'s,  written  from  London  at  the  end  of  1774,  —  a 
few  months  only  before  that  young  patriot  returned 
to  die  so  sadly  within  sight  of  his  native  shores,  —  in 
which  he  tells  his  wife,  to  whom  he  was  not  likely  to 
write  for  any  mere  sensational  effect,  that  "  some  of 
the  first  characters  for  understanding,  integrity,  and 
spirit,"  whom  he  had  met  in  London,  had  used  lan- 
guage of  this  sort :  "  This  Nation  is  lost.  Corruption 
and  the  influence  of  the  Crown  have  led  us  into 
bondage,  and  a  Standing  Army  has  riveted  our 
chains.  To  America  only  can  we  look  for  salvation. 
'Tis  America  only  can  save  England.  Unite  and 
persevere.  You  must  prevail  —  you  must  triumph." 
Quincy  was  careful  not  to  betray  names,  in  a  letter 
which  might  be  intercepted  before  it  reached  its 
destination.  But  we  know  the  men  with  whom  he 


JULY    4,    1876.  43 

had  been  brought  into  association  by  Franklin  and 
other  friends,  —  men  like  Shelburne  and  Hartley 
and  Pownall  and  Priestley  and  Brand  Hollis  and  Sir 
George  Saville,  to  say  nothing  of  Burke  and  Chat- 
ham. The  language  was  not  lost  upon  us.  We  did 
unite  and  persevere.  We  did  prevail  and  triumph. 
And  it  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  we  did  "  save 
England."  We  saved  her  from  herself;  —  saved  her 
from  being  the  successful  instrument  of  overthrowing 
the  rights  of  Englishmen;  —  saved  her  "from  the 
poisoned  chalice  which  would  have  been  commended 
to  her  own  lips;"  —  saved  her  from  "  the  bloody 
instructions  which  would  have  returned  to  plague  the 
inventor."  Not  only  was  it  true,  as  Lord  Macaulay 
said  in  one  of  his  brilliant  Essays,  that  "England 
was  never  so  rich,  so  great,  so  formidable  to  foreign 
princes,  so  absolutely  mistress  of  the  seas,  as  since 
the  alienation  of  her  American  Colonies ; "  but  it  is 
not  less  true  that  England  came  out  of  that  contest 
with  new  and  larger  views  of  Liberty;  with  a 
broader  and  deeper  sense  of  what  was  due  to  human 
rights;  and  with  an  experience  of  incalculable  value 
to  her  in  the  management  of  the  vast  Colonial  Sys- 
tem which  remained,  or  was  in  store,  for  her. 

A  vast  and  gigantic  Colonial  System,  beyond 
doubt,  it  has  proved  to  be !  She  was  just  entering,  a 
hundred  years  ago,  on  that  wonderful  career  of  con- 
quest in  the  East,  which  was  to  compensate  her,- 


44  ORATION. 

if  it  were  a  compensation,  —  for  her  impending  losses 
in  the  West.  Her  gallant  Cornwallis  was  soon  to 
receive  the  jewelled  sword  of  Tippoo  Saib  at  Ban- 
galore, in  exchange  for  that  which  he  was  now  des- 
tined to  surrender  to  Washington  at  Yorktown.  'It 
is  certainly  not  among  the  least  striking  coincidences 
of  our  Centennial  Year,  that,  at  the  very  moment 
when  we  are  celebrating  the  event  which  stripped 
Great  Britain  of  thirteen  Colonies  and  three  millions 
of  subjects,  —  now  grown  into  thirty-eight  States  and 
more  than  forty  millions  of  people,  —  she  is  welcom- 
ing the  return  of  her  amiable  and  genial  Prince  from 
a  royal  progress  through  the  wide-spread  regions  of 
w  Ormus  and  of  Ind,"  bringing  back,  to  lay  at  the 
foot  of  the  British  throne,  the  homage  of  nine  prin- 
cipal Provinces  and  a  hundred  and  forty-eight 
feudatory  States,  and  of  not  less  than  two  hundred 
and  forty  millions  of  people,  from  Ceylon  to  the 
Himalayas,  and  affording  ample  justification  for  the 
Queen's  new  title  of  Empress  of  India!  Among  all 
the  parallelisms  of  modern  history,  there  are  few 
more  striking  and  impressive  than  this. 

The  American  Colonies  never  quarrelled  or  cav- 
illed about  the  titles  of  their  Sovereign.  If,  as  has 
been  said,  "  they  went  to  war  about  a  preamble,"  it 
was  not  about  the  preamble  of  the  royal  name.  It 
was  the  Imperial  power,  the  more  than  Imperial  pre- 
tensions and  usurpations,  which  drove  them  to 


JULY     4,    1876.  45 

rebellion.  The  Declaration  was,  in  its  own  terms,  a 
personal  and  most  stringent  arraignment  of  the 
King.  It  could  have  been  nothing  else.  George 
III.  was  to  ns  the  sole  responsible  instrument  of 
oppression.  Parliament  had,  indeed,  sustained  him; 
but  the  Colonies  had  never  admitted  the  authority  of 
a  Parliament  in  which  they  had  no  representation. 
There  is  no  passage  in  Mr.  Jefferson's  paper  more 
carefully  or  more  felicitously  worded,  than  that  in 
which  he  says  of  the  Sovereign,  that  "he  has  com- 
bined with  others  to  subject  us  to  a  jurisdiction  for- 
eign to  our  constitutions  and  unacknowledged  by 
our  laws,  —  giving  his  assent  to  their  acts  of  pre- 
tended legislation"  A  slip  of  "  the  masterly  pen  " 
on  this  point  might  have  cost  us  our  consistency; 
but  that  pen  was  on  its  guard,  and  this  is  the  only 
allusion  to  Lords  or  Commons.  We  could  recognize 
no  one  but  the  Monarch.  We  could  contend  with 
nothing-  less  than  Royalty.  We  could  separate  our- 
selves only  from  the  Crown.  English  precedents 
had  abundantly  taught  us  that  kings  were  not 
beyond  the  reach  of  arraignment  and  indictment; 
and  arraignment  and  indictment  were  then  our  only 
means  of  justifying  our  cause  to  ourselves  and  to  the 
world.  Yes;  harsh,  severe,  stinging,  scolding,  —  I 
had  almost  said,  —  as  that  long  series  of  allegations 
and  accusations  may  sound,  and  certainly  does 
sound,  as  wu  read  it,  or  listen  to  it,  in  cold  blood,  a 


46  ORATION. 

century  after  the  issues  are  all  happily  settled,  it  was 
a  temperate  and  a  dignified  utterance  under  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  case,  and  breathed  quite  enough 
of  moderation  to  be  relished  or  accepted  by  those 
who  were  bearing  the  brunt  of  so  terrible  a  struggle 
for  life  and  liberty  and  all  that  was  dear  to  them,  as 
that  which  those  issues  involved.  Nor  in  all  that 
bitter  indictment  is  there  a  single  count  which  does 
not  refer  to,  and  rest  upon,  some  violation  of  the 
rights  of  Englishmen,  or  some  violation  of  the  rights 
of  humanity.  We  stand  by  the  Declaration  to-day, 
and  always,  and  disavow  nothing  of  its  reasoning  or 
its  rhetoric. 

And,  after  all,  Jefferson  was  not  a  whit  more 
severe  on  the  King  than  Chatham  had  been  on  the 
King's  Ministers  six  months  before,  when  he  told 
them  to  their  faces:  "The  whole  of  your  polit- 
ical conduct  has  been  one  continued  series  of 
weakness,  temerity,  despotism,  ignorance,  futility, 
negligence,  blundering,  and  the  most  notorious  ser- 
vility, incapacity,  and  corruption."  Nor  was  Wil- 
liam Pitt,  the  younger,  much  more  measured  in  his 
language,  at  a  later  period  of  our  struggle,  when  he 
declared:  "These  Ministers  will  destroy  the  empire 
they  were  called  upon  to  save,  before  the  indignation 
of  a  great  and  suffering  people  can  fall  upon  their 
heads  in  the  punishment  which  they  deserve.  I 
uilirm  the  war  to  have  been  a  most  accursed,  wicked, 


JULY    4,    1876.  47 

barbarous,    cruel,   unnatural,    unjust,    and  diabolical 
war." 

I  need  not  say,  Fellow  Citizens,  that  we  are  here 
to  indulge  in  no  reproaches  upon  Old  England  to- 
day, as  we  look  back  from  the  lofty  height  of  a  Cen- 
tury of  Independence  on  the  course  of  events  which 
severed  us  from  her  dominions.  We  are  by  no 
means  in  the  mood  to  re-open  the  adjudications  of 
Ghent  or  of  Geneva;  nor  can  we  allow  the  ties  of 
old  traditions  to  be  seriously  jarred,  on  such  an 
occasion  as  this,  by  any  recent  failures  of  extradi- 
tions, however  vexatious  or  provoking.  But,  cer- 
tainly, resentments  on  either  side,  for  any  thing  said 
or  done  during  our  Revolutionary  period,  —  after 
such  a  lapse  of  time, —  would  dishonor  the  hearts 
which  cherished  them,  and  the  tongues  which  ut- 
tered them.  Who  wonders  that  George  the  Third 
would  not  let  such  Colonies  as  ours  go  without  a 
struggle?  They  were  the  brightest  jewels  of  his 
crown.  Who  wonders  that  he  shrunk  from-  the 
responsibility  of  such  a  dismemberment  of  his  em- 
pire, and  that  his  brain  reeled  at  the  very  thought  of 
it?  It  would  have  been  a  poor  compliment  to  us, 
had  he  not  considered  us  worth  holding  at  any  and 
every  cost.  We  should  hardly  have  forgiven  him, 
had  he  not  desired  to  retain  us.  Nor  can  we  alto- 
gether wonder,  that  with  the  views  of  kingly  pre- 
rogative which  belonged  to  that  period,  and  in  which 


48  OKATION. 

he  was  educated,  he  should  have  preferred  the  policy 
of  coercion  to  that  of  conciliation,  and  should  have 
insisted  on  sending  over  troops  to  subdue  us. 

Our  old  Mother  Country  has  had,  indeed,  a  pe- 
culiar destiny,  and  in  many  respects  a  glorious  one. 
Not  alone  with  her  drum-beat,  as  Webster  so 
grandly  said,  has  she  encircled  the  earth.  Not  alone 
with  her  martial  airs  has  she  kept  company  with  the 
hours.  She  has  carried  civilization  and  Christianity 
wherever  she  has  carried  her  flag.  She  has  carried 
her  noble  tongue,  with  all  its  incomparable  treasures 
of  literature  and  science  and  religion,  around  the 
globe ;  and,  with  our  aid,  —  for  she  will  confess  that 
we  are  doing  our  full  part  in  this  line  of  extension, 
—  it  is  fast  becoming  the  most  pervading  speech  of 
civilized  man.  We  thank  God  at  this  hour,  and 
at  every  hour,  that  "  Chatham's  language  is  our 
mother  tongue,"  and  that  we  have  an  inherited  and 
an  indisputable  share  in  the  glory  of  so  many  of 
the  great  names  by  which  that  language  has  been 
illustrated  and  adorned. 

But  she  has  done  more  than  all  this.  She  has 
planted  the  great  institutions  and  principles  of  civil 
freedom  in  every  latitude  where  she  could  find  a 
foothold.  From  her  our  Revolutionary  Fathers 
learned  to  understand  and  value  them,  and  from  her 
they  inherited  the  spirit  to  defend  them.  Not  in 
vain  had  her  brave  barons  extorted  Magna  Charta 


JULY    4,    1876.  49 

from  King  John.  Not  in  vain  had  her  Simon  de 
Montfort  summoned  the  knights  and  burgesses,  and 
laid  the  foundations  of  a  Parliament  and  a  House 
of  Commons.  ^NTot  in  vain  had  her  noble  Sir 
John  Eliot  died,  as  the  martyr  of  free  speech,  in 
the  Tower.  ISTot  in  vain  had  her  heroic  Hampden 
resisted  ship-money,  and  died  on  the  battle-field. 
JSTot  in  vain  for  us,  certainly,  the  great  examples  and 
the  great  warnings  of  Cromwell  an'd  the  Common- 
wealth, or  those  sadder  ones  of  Sidney  and  Russell, 
or  that  later  and  more  glorious  one  still  of  William 
of  Orange. 

The  grand  lessons  of  her  own  history,  forgotten, 
overlooked,  or  resolutely  disregarded,  it  may  be,  on 
her  owTn  side  of  the  Atlantic,  in  the  days  we  are 
commemorating,  were  the  very  inspiration  of  her 
Colonies  on  this  side;  and  under  that  inspiration 
they  contended  and  conquered.  And  though  she 
may  sometimes  be  almost  tempted  to  take  sadly  upon 
her  lips  the  words  of  the  old  prophet,  —  "I  have 
nourished  and  brought  np  children,  and  they  have 
rebelled  against  me,"  —  she  has  long  ago  learned 
that  such  a  rebellion  as  "ours  was  really  in  her  own 
interest,  and  for  her  own  ultimate  welfare;  begun, 
continued,  and  ended,  as  it  was,  in  vindication  of  the 
liberties  of  Englishmen. 

I  cannot  forget  how  justly  and  eloquently  my 
friend,  Dr.  Ellis,  a  few  months  ago,  in  this  same 


50  ORATION. 

hall,  gave  expression  to  the  respect  which  is  so 
widely  entertained  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic  for 
the  Sovereign  Lady  who  has  now  graced  the  British 
throne  for  nearly  forty  years.  No  passage  of  his 
admirable  Oration  elicited  a  warmer  response  from 
the  multitudes  who  listened  to  him.  How  much  of 
the  growth  and  grandeur  of  Great  Britain  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  names  of  illustrious  women!  Even 
those  of  us  who  have  no  fancy  for  female  suffrage 
might  often  be  well-nigh  tempted  to  take  refuge, 
from  the  incompetencies  and  intrigues  and  corrup- 
tions of  men,  under  the  presidency  of  the  purer  and 
gentler  sex.  What  would  English  history  be  with- 
out the  names  of  Elizabeth  and  Anne !  What  would 
it  be  without  the  name  of  Victoria,  —  of  whom  it 
has  recently  been  written,  "  that,  by  a  long  course  of 
loyal  acquiescence  in  the  declared  wishes  of  her 
people,  she  has  brought  about  what  is  nothing  less 
than  a  great  Revolution,  —  all  the  more  beneficent 
because  it  has  been  gradual  and  silent!"  Ever 
honored  be  her  name,  and  that  of  her  lamented 
consort ! 

"Ever  beloved  and  loving  may  her  rule  be ; 
And  when  old  Time  shall  lead  her  to  her  end, 
Goodness  and  she  fill  up  one  monument !  " 

The  Declaration  is  adopted  and  promulgated;  but 
we  may  not  forget  how  long  and  how  serious  a  re- 


JULY    4,     1876.  51 

luctance  there  had  been  to  take  the  irrevocable  step. 
As  late  as  September,  1774,  Washington  had  pub- 
licly declared  his  belief  that  Independence  "  was 
wished  by  no  thinking  man."  As  late  as  the  6th  of 
March,  1775,  in  his  memorable  Oration  in  the  Old 
South,  with  all  the  associations  of  "the  Boston 
Massacre  "  fresh  in  his  heart,  Warren  had  declared 
that  "  Independence  was  not  our  aim."  As  late  as 
July,  1775,  the  letter  of  the  Continental  Congress  to 
the  Lord  Mayor  and  Corporation  of  London  had 
said :  "  North  America,  my  Lord,  wishes  most  ar- 
dently for  a  lasting  connection  with  Great  Britain,  on 
terms  of  just  and  equal  liberty;  "  and  a  simultaneous 
humble  petition  to  the  King,  signed  by  every  mem- 
ber of  the  Congress,  reiterated  the  same  assurance. 
And  as  late  as  the  25th  of  August,  1775,  Jefferson 
himself,  in  a  letter  to  the  John  Randolph  of  that 
day,  speaking  of  those  who  "  still  wish  for  reunion 
with  their  parent  country,"  says  most  emphatically, 
rr  I  am  one  of  those ;  and  would  rather  be  in  depend- 
ence on  Great  Britain,  properly  limited,  than  on 
any  nation  on  earth,  or  than  on  no  nation."  Not  all 
the  blood  of  Lexington,  and  Concord,  and  Bunker 
Hill,  crying  from  the  ground  long  before  these 
words  were  written,  had  extinguished  the  wish  for 
reconciliation  and  reunion  even  in  the  heart  of  the 
very  author  of  the  Declaration. 

Tell  me  not,  tell  me  not,  that  there  was  any  thing 


52  ORATION. 

of  equivocation,  any  thing  of  hypocrisy,  in  these  and 
a  hundred  other  similar  expressions  which  might  be 
cited.  The  truest  human  hearts  are  full  of  such 
inconsistency  and  hypocrisy  as  that.  The  dearest 
friends,  the  tenderest  relatives,  are  never  more  over- 
flowing and  outpouring,  nor  ever  more  sincere,  in 
feelings  and  expressions  of  devotion  and  love,  than 
when  called  to  contemplate  some  terrible  impending 
necessity  of  final  separation  and  divorce.  The  ties 
between  us  and  Old  England  could  not  be  sundered 
without  sadness,  and  sadness  on  both  sides  of  the 
ocean.  Franklin,  albeit  his  eyes  were  w  unused  to 
the  melting  mood,"  is  recorded  to  have  wept  as  he 
left  England,  in  view  of  the  inevitable  result  of 
which  he  was  coming  home  to  be  a  witness  and  an 
instrument;  and  I  have  heard  from  the  poet  Rogers's 
own  lips,  what  many  of  you  may  have  read  in  his 
Table-Talk,  how  deeply  he  was  impressed,  as  a  boy, 
by  his  father's  putting  on  a  mourning  suit,  when 
he  heard  of  the  first  shedding  of  American  blood. 

JS"or  could  it,  in  the  nature  of  things,  have  been 
only  their  warm  and  undoubted  attachment  to  Eng- 
land, which  made  so  many  of  the  men  of  1776 
reluctant  to  the  last  to  cross  the  Rubicon.  They 
saw  clearly  before  them,  they  could  not  help  seeing, 
the  full  proportions,  the  tremendous  odds,  of  the 
contest  into  which  the  Colonies  must  be  plunged  by 
such  a  step.  Think  you  that  no-  apprehensions  and 


JULY    4,    1876.  53 

anxieties  weighed  heavily  on  the  minds  and  hearts  of 
those  far-seeing  men?  Think  you  that  as  their 
names  were  called  on  the  day  we  commemorate,  be- 
ginning with  Josiah  Bartlett,  of  ~New  Hampshire,  — 
or  as,  one  by  one,  they  approached  the  Secretary's 
desk  on  the  following  2d  of  August,  to  write  their 
names  on  that  now  hallowed  parchment,  —  they  did 
not  realize  the  full  responsibility,  and  the  full  risk  to 
their  country  and  to  themselves,  which  such  a  vote 
and  such  a  signature  involved?  They  sat,  indeed, 
with  closed  doors;  and  it  is  only  from  traditions  or 
eaves-droppings,  or  from  the  casual  expressions  of 
diaries  or  letters,  that  we  catch  glimpses  of  what 
was  done,  or  gleanings  of  what  was  said.  But 
how  full  of  import  are  some  of  those  glimpses  and 
gleanings! 

:?  Will  you  sign  ?  "  said  Hancock  to  Charles  Car- 
roll, who,  as  we  have  seen,  had  not  been  present  on 
the  4th  of  July.  "  Most  willingly,"  was  the  reply. 
K  There  goes  two  millions  with  a  dash  of  the  pen," 
says  one  of  those  standing  by;  while  another  re- 
marks, "  Oh,  Carroll,  you  will  get  off,  there  are  so 
many  Charles  Carrolls."  And  then  we  may  see  him 
stepping  back  to  the  desk,  and  putting  that  addition 
— "of  Carrollton  "  -to  his  name,  which  will  desig- 
nate him  for  ever,  and  be  a  prouder  title  of  nobility 
than  those  in  the  peerage  of  Great  Britain,  which 


54  ORATION. 

were  afterwards  adorned  by   his   accomplished  and 
fascinating  grand-daughters. 

:?We  must  stand  by  each  other  —  we  must  hang 
together,"  —  is  presently  heard  from  some  one  of  the 
signers ;  with  the  instant  reply,  w  Yes,  we  must  hang 
together,  or  we  shall  assuredly  hang  separately." 
And,  on  this  suggestion,  the  portly  and  humorous 
Benj.  Harrison,  whom  we  have  seen  forcing  Hancock 
into  the  Chair,  may  be  heard  bantering  our  spare  and 
slender  Elbridge  Gerry,  —  levity  provoking  levity,  - 
and  telling  him  with  grim  merriment  that,  when  that 
hanging  scene  arrives,  he  shall  have  the  advantage  :  — 
"  It  will  be  all  over  with  me  in  a  moment,  but  you 
will  be  kicking  in  the  air  half  an  hour  after  I  am 
gone ! "  These  are  among  the  K  asides "  of  the 
drama,  but,  I  need  not  say,  they  more  than  make  up 
in  significance  for  all  they  may  seem  to  lack  in 
dignity. 

The  excellent  William  Ellery,  of  Rhode  Island, 
whose  name  was  afterwards  borne  by  his  grandson, 
our  revered  Channing,  often  spoke,  we  are  told,  of 
the  scene  of  the  signing,  and  spoke  of  it  as  an  event 
which  many  regarded  with  awe,  perhaps  with  uncer- 
tainty, but  none  with  fear.  "  I  was  determined,"  he 
used  to  say,  "  to  see  how  all  looked,  as  they  signed 
what  might  be  their  death  warrant.  I  placed  myself 
beside  the  Secretary,  Charles  Thomson,  and  eyed 
each  closely  as  he  affixed  his  name  to  the  document. 


JULY    4,    1876.  55 

Undaunted  resolution  was  displayed  in  every  coun- 
tenance." 

'You  inquire,"  wrote  John  Adams  to  William 
Plumer,  "  whether  every  member  of  Congress  did, 
on  the  4th  of  July,  1776,  in  fact,  cordially  approve  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  They  who  were 
then  members  all  signed  it,  and,  as  I  could  not  see 
their  hearts,  it  would  be  hard  for  me  to  say  that  they 
did  not  approve  it;  but,  as  far  as  I  could  penetrate 
the  intricate  internal  foldings  of  their  souls,  I  then 
believed,  and  have  not  since  altered  my  opinion,  that 
there  were  several  who  signed  with  regret,  and 
several  others  with  many  doubts  and  much  luke- 
warmness.  The  measure  had  been  on  the  carpet  for 
months,  and  obstinately  opposed  from  day  to  day. 
Majorities  were  constantly  against  it.  For  many 
days  the  majority  depended  upon  Mr.  Hewes  of 
North  Carolina.  While  a  member  one  day  was 
speaking,  and  reading  documents  from  all  the  Colo- 
nies to  prove  that  the  public  opinion,  the  general 
sense  of  all,  was  in  favor  of  the  measure,  when  he 
came  to  North  Carolina,  and  produced  letters  and 
public  proceedings  which  demonstrated  that  the 
majority  of  that  Colony  were  in  favor  of  it,  Mr. 
Hewes,  who  had  hitherto  constantly  voted  against  it, 
started  suddenly  upright,  and  lifting  up  both  his 
hands  tcf  Heaven,  as  if  he  had  been  in  a  trance,  cried 
out,  ?  It  is  done,  and  I  will  abide  by  it.'  I  would 


56  ORATION. 

give  more  for  a  perfect  painting  of  the  terror  and 
horror  upon  the  faces  of  the  old  majority,  at  that 
critical  moment,  than  for  the  best  piece  of  Raphael.". 

There  is  quite  enough  in  these  traditions  and  hear- 
says, in  these  glimpses  and  gleanings,  to  show  us 
that  the  supporters  and  signers  of  the  Declaration 
were  not  blind  to  the  responsibilities  and  hazards  in 
which  they  were  involving  themselves  and  the  coun- 
try. There  is  quite  enough,  certainly,  in  these  and 
other  indications,  to  give  color  and  credit  to  what  I 
so  well  remember  hearing  the  late  Mr.  Justice  Story 
say,  half  a  century  ago,  that,  as  the  result  of  all  his 
conversations  with  the  great  men  of  the  Revolution- 
ary Period,  —  and  especially  with  his  illustrious  and 
venerated  chief  on  the  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States,  John  Marshall,  —  he  was  con- 
vinced that  a  majority  of  the  Continental  Congress 
was  opposed  to  the  Declaration,  and  that  it  was  car- 
ried through  by  the  patient,  persistent,  and  over- 
whelming efforts  and  arguments  of  the  minority. 

Two  of  those  arguments,  as  Mr.  Jefferson  has  left 
them  on  record,  were  enough  for  that  occasion,  or 
certainly  are  enough  for  this. 

One  of  the  two  was,  w  That  the  people  wait  for  us 
to  lead  the  way;  that  they  are  in  favor  of  the  meas- 
ure, though  the  instructions  given  by  some  of  their 
representatives  are  not."  And  most  true,  ihdeed,  it 
was,  my  friends,  at  that  day,  as  it  often  has  been 


JULY    4,    1876.  57 

since  that  day,  that  the  people  were  ahead  of  their 
so-called  leaders.  The  minds  of  the  masses  were 
made  up.  They  had  no  doubts  or  misgivings.  They 
demanded  that  Independence  should  be  recognized 
and  proclaimed.  John  Adams  knew  how  to  keep  up 
with  them.  Sam.  Adams  had  kept  his  finger  on 
their  pulse  from  the  beginning,  and  had  "marked 
time  "  for  every  one  of  their  advancing  steps.  Pat- 
rick Henry  and  Richard  Henry  Lee  and  Thomas 
Jefferson,  and  some  other  ardent  and  noble  spirits, 
were  by  no  means  behind  them.  But  not  a  few  of 
the  leaders  were,  in  fact,  only  followers.  :?  The  peo- 
ple waited  for  them  to  lead  the  way."  Independence 
was  the  resolve  and  the  act  of  the  American  people, 
and  the  American  people  gladly  received,  and  enthu- 
siastically ratified,  and  heroically  sustained  the  Dec- 
laration, until  Independence  was  no  longer  a  question 
either  at  home  or  abroad.  Yes,  our  Great  Charter, 
as  we  fondly  call  it,  though  with  something,  it  must 
be  confessed,  of  poetic  or  patriotic  license,  was  no 
temporizing  concession,  wrung  by  menaces  from 
reluctant  Monarchs;  but  was  the  spontaneous  and 
imperative  dictate  of  a  Nation  resolved  to  be  free ! 

The  other  of  those  two  arguments  was  even  more 
conclusive  and  more  clinching.  It  was,  "  That  the 
question  was  not  whether  by  a  Declaration  of  Inde- 
pendence we  should  make  ourselves  what  we  are 

8 


58  ORATION. 

not,  but  whether  we   should   declare   a   fact  which 
aleady  exists." 

w  A  fact  which  already  exists ! "  Mr.  Mayor  and 
Fellow  Citizens,  there  is  no  more  interesting  histori- 
cal truth  to  us  of  Boston  than  this.  Our  hearts  are 
all  at  Philadelphia  to-day,  as  I  have  already  said, 
rejoicing  in  all  that  is  there  said  and  done  in  honor 
of  the  men  who  made  this  day  immortal,  and  hailing 
it,  with  our  fellow-countrymen,  from  ocean  to  ocean, 
and  from  the  lakes  to  the  gulf,  as  our  National 
Birthday.  And  nobly  has  Philadelphia  met  the 
requisitions,  and  more  than  fulfilled  the  expectations, 
of  the  occasion;  furnishing  a  fete  and  a  pageant  of 
which  the  whole  Nation  is  proud.  Yet  we  are  not 
called  on  to  forget,  —  we  could  not  be  pardoned, 
indeed,  for  not  remembering,  —  that,  while  the  Dec- 
laration was  boldly  and  grandly  made  in  that  hal- 
lowed Pennsylvania  Hall,  Independence  had  already 
been  won, — and  won  here  in  Massachusetts.  It  was 
said  by  some  one  of  the  old  patriots,  —  John  Adams, 
I  believe,  —  that  "  the  Revolution  was  effected  before 
the  war  commenced ; "  and  Jefferson  is  now  our 
authority  for  the^assertion  that  "Independence  ex- 
isted before  it  was  declared."  They  both  well  knew 
what  they  were  talking  about.  Congresses  in  Car- 
penters' Hall,  and  Congresses  in  the  old  Pennsyl- 
vania State  House,  did  grand  things  and  were 
composed  of  grand  men,  and  we  render  to  their 


JULY    4,    1876.  59 

memories  all  the  homage  and  all  the  glory  which 
they  so  richly  earned.  But  here  in  Boston,  the  capi- 
tal of  Massachusetts,  and  the  principal  town  of 
British  North  America  at  that  day,  the  question  had 
already  been  brought  to  an  issue,  and  already  been 
irrevocably  decided.  Here  the  manifest  destiny  of 
the  Colonies  had  been  recognized  and  accepted.  It 
was  upon  us,  as  all  the  world  knows,  that  the  blows 
of  British  oppression  fell  first  and  fell  heaviest, — 
fell  like  a  storm  of  hail-stones  and  coals  of  fire;  and 
where  they  fell,  and  as  soon  as  they  fell,  they 
were  resisted,  and  successfully  resisted. 

Why,  away  back  in  1761,  when  George  the  Third 
had  been  but  a  year  on  his  throne,  and  when  the 
printer's  ink  on  the  pages  of  our  Harvard  "  Pietas 
et  Gratulatio "  was  hardly  dry ;  when  the  Seven 
Years'  War  was  still  unfinished,  in  which  New 
England  had  done  her  full  share  of  the  fighting,  and 
reaped  her  full  share  of  the  glory,  and  when  the 
British  flag,  by  the  help  of  her  men  and  money,  was 
just  floating  in  triumph  over  the  whole  American 
continent,  —  a  mad  resolution  had  been  adopted  to 
reconstruct  —  Oh,  word  of  ill-omen !  —  the  whole 
Colonial  system,  and  to  bring  America  into  closer 
conformity  and  subjection  to  the  laws  of  the  Mother 
Country.  A  Revenue  is  to  be  collected  here.  A 
Standing  Army  is  to  be  established  here.  The  Nav- 
igation Act  and  Acts  of  Trade  are  to  be  enforced 


60  ORATION. 

and  executed  here.  And  all  without  any  representa- 
tion on  our  part.  —  The  first  practical  step  in  this 
direction  is  taken.  A  custom-house  officer,  named 
Cockle,  applies  to  the  Superior  Court  at  Salem  for  a 
writ  of  assistance.  That  cockle-shell  exploded  like 
dynamite!  The  Court  postpones  the  case,  and 
orders  its  argument  in  Boston.  And  then  and  there, 
—  in  1761,  in  our  Old  Town  House,  afterwards 
known  as  the  Old  State  House,  —  alas,  alas,  that  it 
is  thought  necessary  to  talk  about  removing  or  even 
reconstructing  it!  —  James  Otis,  as  John  Adams 
himself  tells  us,  "  breathed  into  this  nation  the  breath 
of  life."  "  Then  and  there,"  he  adds,  and  he  spoke 
of  what  he  witnessed  and  heard,  "  then  and  there 
the  child  Independence  was  born.  In  fifteen  years, 
i.  e.,  in  1776,  he  grew  up  to  manhood,  and  declared 
himself  free." 

The  next  year  finds  the  same  great  scholar  and 
orator  exposing  himself  to  the  cry  of  "  treason  "  in 
denouncing  the  idea  of  taxation  without  representa- 
tion, and  forthwith  vindicating  himself  in  a  masterly 
pamphlet  which  excited  the  admiration  and  sympathy 
of  the  whole  people. 

Another  year  brings  the  first  instalment  of  the 
scheme  for  raising  a  revenue  in  the  Colonies,  —  in 
the  shape  of  declaratory  resolves;  and  Otis  meets  it 
plumply  and  boldly,  in  Faneuil  Hall,  —  at  that 
moment  freshly  rebuilt  and  reopened,  —  with  the 


JULY    4,    1876.  61 

counter  declaration  that  "every  British  subject  in 
America  is,  of  common  right,  by  act  of  Parliament, 
and  by  the  laws  of  God  and  Nature,  entitled  to  all 
the  essential  privileges  of  Britons." 

And  now  George  Grenville  has  devised  and  pro- 
posed the  Stamp  Act.  And,  before  it  is  even 
known  that  the  Bill  had  passed,  Samuel  Adams  is 
heard  reading,  in  that  same  Faneuil  Hall,  at  the  May 
meeting  of  1764,  those  memorable  instructions  from 
Boston  to  her  representatives:  <? There  is  no  room 
for  delay.  If  taxes  are  laid  upon  us  in  any  shape 
without  our  having  a  legal  representation  where  they 
are  laid,  are  we  not  reduced  from  the  character  of 
free  subjects  to  the  miserable  state  of  tributary 
slaves?  .  .  .  We  claim  British  rights,  not  by 
charter  only;  we  are  born  to  them.  Use  your  en- 
deavors that  the  weight  of  the  other  North  American 
Colonies  may  be  added  to  that  of  this  Province,  that 
by  united  application  all  may  happily  obtain  redress." 
Redress  and  Union  —  and  union  as  the  means,  and 
the  only  means  of  redress  —  had  thus  early  become 
the  doctrine  of  our  Boston  leaders;  and  James  Otis 
follows  out  that  doctrine,  without  a  moment's 
delay,  m  another  brilliant  plea  for  the  rights  of  the 
Colonies. 

The  next  year  finds  the  pen  of  John  Adams  in 
motion,  in  a  powerful  communication  to  the  public 
journals,  setting  forth  distinctly,  that  "  there  seems 


62  ORATION. 

to  be  a  direct  and  formal  design  on  foot  in  Great 
Britain  to  enslave  all  America; "  and  adding  most 
ominously  those  emphatic  words :  "  Be  it  remem- 
bered, Liberty  must  be  defended  at  all  hazards !  " 

And,  I  need  not  say,  it  was  remembered;  and 
Liberty  was  defended,  at  all  hazards,  here  upon  our 
own  soil. 

Ten  long  years,  however,  are  still  to  elapse  before 
the  wager  of  battle  is  to  be  fully  joined.  The  stir- 
ring events  which  crowded  those  years,  and  which 
have  been  so  vividly  depicted  by  Sparks  and  Ban- 
croft and  Frothingham,  —  to  name  no  others,  —  are 
too  familiar  for  repetition  or  reference.  Virginia, 
through  the  clarion  voice  of  Patrick  Henry,  nobly 
sustained  by  her  House  of  Burgesses,  leads  off  in 
the  grand  remonstrance.  Massachusetts,  through 
the  trumpet  tones  of  James  Otis,  rouses  the  whole 
Continent  by  a  demand  for  a  General  Congress. 
South  Carolina,  through  the  influence  of  Christopher 
Gadsden,  responds  first  to  the  demand.  "  Deep 
calleth  unto  deep."  In  October,  1765,  delegates, 
regularly  or  irregularly  chosen,  from  nine  Colonies, 
are  in  consultation  in  New  York;  and  from  South 
Carolina  comes  the  watchword  of  assured  success: 
*  There  ought  to  be  no  New  England  man,  no  New 
Yorker,  known  on  the  Continent;  but  all  of  us 
Americans." 

Meantime,  the  people  are  everywhere  inflamed  and 


JULY    4,    1876.  63 

maddened  by  the  attempt  to  enforce  the  Stamp  Act. 
Everywhere  that  attempt  is  resisted.  Everywhere  it 
is  resolved  that  it  shall  never  be  executed.  It  is  at 
length  repealed,  and  a  momentary  lull  succeeds. 
But  the  repeal  is  accompanied  by  more  declaratory 
resolutions  of  the  power  of  Parliament  to  tax  the 
Colonies  "  in  all  cases  whatsoever;  "  and  then  fol- 
lows that  train  of  abuses  and  usurpations  which 
Jefferson's  immortal  paper  charges  upon  the  King, 
and  which  the  King  himself  unquestionably  ordered. 
"  It  was  to  no  purpose,"  said  Lord  North,  in  1774, 
"  making  objections,  for  the  King  would  have  it  so." 
?  The  King,"  said  he,  "  meant  to  try  the  question  with 
America."  And  it  is  well  added,  by  the  narrator  of 
the  anecdote,  "  Boston  seems  to  have  been  the  place 
fixed  upon  to  try  the  question." 

Yes,  at  Boston,  the  bolts  of  Royal  indignation  are 
to  be  aimed  and  winged.  She  has  been  foremost  in 
destroying  the  Stamps,  in  defying  the  Soldiers,  in 
drowning  the  Tea.  Letters,  too,  have  reached  the 
government,  like  those  which  Rehum  the  Chancellor 
and  Shimshai  the  Scribe  wrote  to  King  Artaxerxes 
about  Jerusalem,  calling  this  "  a  rebellious  city,  and 
hurtful  unto  Kings  and  Provinces,  and  that  they  have 
moved  sedition  within  the  same  of  old  time,  and  would 
not  pay  toll,  tribute,  and  custom ;  "  and  warning  His 
Majesty  that,  unless  it  was  subdued  and  crushed, 
"  he  would  have  no  portion  on  this  side  the  River." 


64  OKATION. 

In  vain  did  our  eloquent  young  Quincy  pour  forth  his 
burning  words  of  remonstrance.  The  Port  of  Boston 
is  closed,  and  her  people  are  to  be  starved  into  com- 
pliance. Well  did  Boston  say  of  herself,  in  Town 
Meeting,  that  "  She  had  been  stationed  by  Providence 
in  the  front  rank  of  the  conflict."  Grandly  has  our 
eloquent  historian,  Bancroft,  said  of  her,  in  a  sen- 
tence which  sums  up  the  whole  matter  w  like  the  last 
embattling  of  a  Roman  legion  "  :  -  f  The  King  set 
himself  and  his  Ministry  and  his  Parliament  and  all 
Great  Britain  to  subdue  to  his  will  one  stubborn 
little  town  on  the  sterile  coast  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay.  The  odds  against  it  were  fearful;  but  it 
showed  a  life  inextinguishable,  and  had  been  chosen 
to  guard  over  the  liberties  of  mankind!  " 

Generously  and  nobly  did  the  other  Colonies  come 
to  our  aid,  and  the  cause  of  Boston  was  everywhere 
acknowledged  to  be  "  the  cause  of  all."  But  we  may 
not  forget  how  peculiarly  it  was  "  the  cause  of  Bos- 
ton," and  that  here,  on  our  own  Massachusetts  soil, 
the  practical  question  of  Independence  was  first  tried 
and  virtually  settled.  The  brave  Colonel  Pickering 
at  Salem  Bridge,  the  heroic  minute  men  at  Lexington 
and  Concord  Bridge,  the  gallant  Colonel  Prescott  at 
Bunker  Hill,  did  their  part  in  hastening  that  settle- 
ment and  bringing  it  to  a  crisis;  and  when  the  Con- 
tinental Army  was  at  length  brought  to  our  rescue, 
and  the  glorious  Washington,  after  holding  the' 


JULY    4,    1876.  65 

British  forces  at  bay  for  nine  months,  had  fairly 
driven  them  from  the  town,  —  though  more  than 
three  months  were  still  to  intervene  before  the  Dec- 
laration was  to  be  made,  —  it  could  truly  and  justly 
be  said  that  it  was  only  "the  declaration  of  a  fact 

which  already  exists." 

» 

Indeed,  Massachusetts  had  practically  administered 
"  a  government  independent  of  the  King  "  from  the 
19th  of  July,  1775;  while  on  the  very  first  day  of 
May,  1776,  her  General  Court  had  passed  a  solemn 
Act,  to  erase  forthwith  the  name  of  the  King,  and  the 
year  of  his  reign,  from  all  civil  commissions,  writs, 
and  precepts;  and  to  substitute  therefor  "the  Year 

of  the  Christian  Era,  and  the  name  of  the  Govern- 

• 

ment  and  the  people  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  in 
~New  England."  Other  Colonies  may  have  empow- 
ered or  instructed  their  delegates  in  Congress,  earlier 
than  this  Colony,  to  act  on  the  subject.  But  this 
was  action  itself,  —  positive,  decisive,  conclusive 
action.  The  Declaration  was  made  in  Philadelphia; 
but  the  Independence  .which  was  declared  can  date 
back  nowhere,  for  its  first  existence  as  a  fact,  earlier 
than  to  Massachusetts.  Upon  her  the  lot  fell  "  to  try 
the  question ;  "  and,  with  the  aid  of  Washington  and 
the  Continental  Army,  it  was  tried,  and  tried  trium- 
phantly, upon  her  soil.  Certainly,  if  Faneuil  Hall 
was  the  Cradle  of  Liberty,  our  Old  State  House  was 
the  Cradle  of  Independence,  and  our  Old  South  the 


66  ORATION. 

Nursery  of  Liberty  and  Independence  both;  and  if 
these  sacred  edifices,  all  or  any  of  them,  are  indeed 
destined  to  disappear,  let  us  see  to  it  that  some  cor- 
ner of  their  sites,  at  least,  be  consecrated  to  monu- 
ments which  shall  tell  their  story,  in  legible  lettering, 
to  our  children  and  our  children's  children  for  ever! 

Thanks  be  to.  God,  that,  in  His  good  providence, 
the  trial  of  this  great  question  fell  primarily  upon  a 
Colony  and  a  people  peculiarly  fitted  to  meet  it;- 
whose  whole  condition  and  training  had  prepared 
them  for  it,  and  whose  whole  history  had  pointed 
to  it. 

Why,  quaint  old  John  Evelyn,  in  his  delicious 
Diary,  tells  us,  under  date  of  May,  1671,  that  the 
great  anxiety  of  the  Council  for  Plantations,  of  which 
he  had  just  been  made  a  member,  was  "  to  know  the 
condition  of  New  England,"  which  appeared  "  to  be 
very  independent  as  to  their  regard  to  Old  England 
or  His  Majesty,"  and  "  almost  upon  the  very  brink  of 
renouncing  any  dependence  on  the  Crown !  " 

K I  have  always  laughed,"  said  John  Adams,  in  a 
letter  to  Benjamin  Rush,  in  1807,  w  at  the  affectation 
of  representing  American  Independence  as  a  novel 
idea,  as  a  modern  discovery,  as  a  late  invention.  The 
idea  of  it  as  a  possible  thing,  as  a  probable  event,  as 
a  necessary  and  unavoidable  measure,  in  case  Great 
Britain  should  assume  an  unconstitutional  authority 
over  us,  has  been  familiar  to  Americans  from  the  first 


JULY    4,    1876.  67 

settlement  of  the  country,  and  was  as  well  under- 
stood by  Governor  "Winthrop,  in  1075,  as  by  Governor 
Samuel  Adams,  when  he  told  you  that  Independence 
had  been  the  first  wish  of  his  heart  for  seven  years." 
r  The  principles  and  feelings  which  produced  the 
Revolution,"  said  he  again,  in  his  second  letter  to 
Tudor,  in  1818,  "ought  to  be  traced  back  for  two 
hundred  years,  and  sought  in  the  history  of  the  coun- 
try from  the  first  plantations  in  America."  The  first 
emigrants,  he  maintains,  were  the  true  authors  of  our 
Independence,  and  the  men  of  the  Revolutionary 
period,  himself  among  them,  were  only  "  the  awaken- 
ers  and  revivers  of  the  original  fundamental  principle 
of  Colonization." 

And  the  accomplished  historian  of  ISTew  England, 
Dr.  Palfrey,  follows  up  the  idea,  and  says  more  pre- 
cisely: "He  who  well  weighs  the  facts  which  have 
been  presented  in  connection  with  the  principal 
emigration  to  Massachusetts,  and  other  related  facts 
which  will  oifer  themselves  to  notice  as  we  proceed, 
may  find  himself  conducted  to  the  conclusion  that 
when  Wiiithrop  and  his  associates  (in  1629)  pre- 
pared to  convey  across  the  water  a  Charter  from  the 
King,  which,  they  hoped,  would  in  their  beginnings 
afford  them  some  protection  both  from  himself  and, 
through  him,  from  the  Powers  of  Continental 
Europe,  they  had  conceived  a  project  no  less  im- 
portant than  that  of  laying  on  this  side  of  the 


68  ORATION. 

Atlantic  the  foundations  of  a  Nation  of  Puritan 
Englishmen,  —  foundations  to  be  built  upon  as  future 
circumstances  should  decide  or  allow." 

Indeed,  that  transfer  of  their  Charter  and  of  their 
"  whole  government "  to  New  England,  on  their  own 
responsibility,  was  an  act  closely,  approaching  to  a 
Declaration  of  Independence,  and  clearly  foreshad- 
owing it.  And  when,  only  a  few  years  afterwards, 
we  find  the  magistrates  and  deputies  resisting  a 
demand  for  the  surrender  of  the  Charter,  studiously 
and  systematically  "  avoiding  and  protracting "  all 
questions  on  the  subject,  and  "hastening  their  for- 
tifications "  meantime  ;  and  when  we'  hear  even  the 
ministers  of  the  Colony  openly  declaring  that,  "if  a 
General  Governor  were  sent  over  here,  we  ought  not 
to  accept  him,  but  to  defend  our  lawful  possessions, 
if  we  were  able," : —  we  recognize  a  spirit  and  a 
purpose  which  cannot  be  mistaken.  That  spirit  and 
that  purpose  were  manifested  and  illustrated  in  a 
manner  even  more  marked  and  unequivocal,  —  as 
the  late  venerable  Josiah  Quincy  reminded  the 
people  of  Boston,  just  half  a  century  ago  to-day,  - 
when  under  the  lead  of  one  who  had  come  over  in 
the  ship  with  the  Charter,  and  had  lived  to  be  the 
Nestor  of  New  England,  —  Simon  Bradstreet,  —  "a 
glorious  Revolution  was  effected  here  in  Massachu- 
setts thirty  days  before  it  was  known  that  King  Wil- 
liam had  just  effected  a  similar  glorious  Revolution 


JULY    4,    1876.  69 

on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic."  New  England, 
it  seems,  with  characteristic  and  commendable  de- 
spatch, had  fairly  got  rid  of  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  a 
month  before  she  knew  that  Old  England  had  got 
rid  of  his  Master  ! 

But  I  do  not  forget  that  we  must  look  further 
back  than  even  the  earliest  settlement  of  the  Amer- 
ican Colonies  for  the  primal  Fiat  of  Independence. 
I  do  not  forget  that  when  Edmund  Burke,  in  1775, 
in  alluding  to  the  possibility  of  an  American  repre- 
sentation in  Parliament,  exclaimed  so  emphatically 
and  eloquently,  "  Opposuit  datura  —  I  cannot  re- 
move the  eternal  barriers  of  the  creation,"  he  had 
really  exhausted  the  whole  argument.  No  effective 
representation  was  possible.  If  it  had  been  possible, 
England  herself  would  have  been  aghast  at  it.  The 
very  idea  of  James  Otis  and  Patrick  Henry  and  the 
Adamses  arguing  the  great  questions  of  human 
rights  and  popular  liberty  on  the  floor  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  and  in  the  hearing  of  the  common 
people  of  Great  Britain,  would  have  thrown  the 
King  and  Lord  North  into  convulsions  of  terror,  and 
we  should  soon  have  heard  them  crying  out,  "  These 
men  that  have  turned  the  world  upside  down  are 
come  hither  also."  One  of  their  own  Board  of 
Trade  (Soame  Jenyns)  well  said,  with  as  much  truth 
as  humor  or  sarcasm,  "  I  have  lately  seen  so  many 
specimens  of  the  great  powers  of  speech  of  which 


70  ORATION. 

these  American  gentlemen  are  possessed,  that  I 
should  be  afraid  the  sudden  importation  of  so  much 
eloquence  at  once  would  endanger  the  safety  of 
England.  It  will  be  much  cheaper  for  us  to  pay 
their  Army  than  their  Orators."  But  no  effective 
representation  was  possible;  and  without  it  Taxation 
was  Tyranny,  in  spite  of  the  great  Dictionary  dog- 
matist and  his  insolent  pamphlet. 

Why,  even  in  these  days  of  Ocean  Steamers, 
reducing  the  passage  across  the  Atlantic  from  forty 
or  fifty  or  sixty  days  to  ten,  representation  in  West- 
minster Hall  is  not  proposed  for  the  colonies  which 
England  still  holds  on  our  continent;  and  it  would 

be  little  better  than  a  farce,  if  it  were  proposed  and 

» 
attempted.     The    Dominion   of  Canada,   as  we   all 

know,  remains  as  she  is,  seeking  neither  indepen- 
denge  nor  annexation,  only  because  her  people  prefer 
to  be,  and  are  proud  of  being,  a  part  of  the  British 
empire  ;  and  because  that  empire  has  abandoned  all 
military  occupation  or  forcible  restraint  upon  them, 
and  has  adopted  a  system  involving  no  collision  or 
contention.  Canada  is  now  doubly  a  monument  of 
the  greatness  and  wisdom  of  the  immortal  Chatham. 
His  military  policy  conquered  it  for  England  ;  and 
his  civil  policy,  "  ruling  from  his  urn,"  and  supple- 
mented by  that  of  his  great  son,  holds  it  for  England 
at  this  day  ;  permitting  it  substantially  to  rule  itself, 
through  the  agency  of  a  Parliament  of  its  own,  with 


JULY    4,    1876.  71 

at  this  moment,  as  it  happens,  an  able,  intelligent, 
and  accomplished  Governor-General,  whose  name 
and  blood  were  not  without  close  affinities  to  those 
of  that  marvellous  statesman  and  orator  while  he 
lived. 

It  did  not  require  the  warning  of  our  example  to 
bring  about  such  results.  It  is  written  in  the  eternal 
constitution  of  things  that  no  large  colonies,  edu- 
cated to  a  sense  of  their  rights  and  capable  of 
defending  them,  —  no  English  or  Anglo-Saxon  colo- 
nies, certainly,  —  can  be  governed  by  a  Power  three 
thousand  miles  across  an  ocean,  unless  they  are  gov- 
erned to  their  own  satisfaction,  and  held  as  colonies 
with  their  own  consent  and  free  will.  An  Imperial 
military  sway  may  be  as  elastic  and  far-reaching  as 
the  magnetic  wires,  —  it  matters  not  whether  three 
thousand  or  fifteen  thousand  miles,  —  over  an  unciv- 
ilized region  or  an  unenlightened  race.  But  who  is 
wild  enough  to  conceive,  as  Burke  said  a  hundred 
years  ago,  "  that  the  natives  of  Hindostan  and  those 
of  Virginia  could  be  ordered  in  the  same  manner;  or 
that  the  Cutchery  Court  and  the  grand  jury  at 
Salem  could  be  regulated  on  a  similar  plan"?  "I 
am  convinced,"  said  Fox,  in  1791,  in  the  fresh  light 
of  the  experience  America  had  aiforded  him,  "  that 
the  only  method  of  retaining  distant  Colonies  with 
advantage  is  to  enable  them  to  govern  themselves." 

Yes,  from  the  hour  when  Columbus  and  his  com- 


72  ORATION. 

peers  discovered  our  continent,  its  ultimate  political 
destiny  was  fixed.  At  the  very  gateway  of  the 
Pantheon  of  American  Liberty  and  American  Inde- 
pendence might  well  be  seen  a  triple  monument,  like 
that  to  the  old  inventors  of  printing  at  Frankfort, 
including  Columbus  and  Americus  Vespucius  and 
Cabot.  They  were  the  pioneers  in  the  march  to 
Independence.  They  were  the  precursors  in  the 
only  progress  of  freedom  which  was  to  have  no 
backward  steps.  Liberty  had  struggled  long  and 
bravely  in  other  ages  and  in  other  lands.  It  had 
made  glorious  manifestations  of  its  power  and 
promise  in  Athens  and  in  Rome;  in  the  mediaeval 
republics  of  Italy;  on  the  plains  of  Germany;  along 
the  dykes  of  Holland;  among  the  icy  fastnesses  of 
Switzerland;  and,  more  securely  and  hopefully  still, 
in  the  sea-girt  isle  of  Old  England.  But  it  was  the 
glory  of  those  heroic  old  navigators  to  reveal  a 
standing-place  for  it  at  last,  where  its  lever  could 
find  a  secure  fulcrum,  and  rest  safely  until  it  had 
moved  the  world!  The  fulness  of  time  had  now 
come.  Under  an  impulse  of  religious  conviction, 
the  poor,  persecuted  Pilgrims  launched  out  upon  the 
stormy  deep  in  a  single,  leaking,  almost  foundering 
bark;  and  in  the  very  cabin  of  the  "May-flower"  the 
first  written  compact  of  self-government  in  the  his- 
tory of  mankind  is  prepared  and  signed.  Ten  years 
afterwards  the  Massachusetts  Company  come  over 


JULY    4,    1876.  73 

with  their  Charter,  and  administer  it  on  the  avowed 
principle  that  the  whole  government,  civil  and 
religious,  is  transferred.  All  the  rest  which  is  to 
follow  until  the  4th  of  July,  1776,  is  only  matter  of 
time  and  opportunity.  Certainly,  my  friends,  as  we 
look  back  to-day  through  the  long  vista  of  the  past, 
we  perceive  that  it  was  no  mere  Declaration  of  men, 
which  primarily  brought  about  the  Independence  we 
celebrate.  We  cannot  but  reverently  recognize  the 
hand  of  that  Almighty  Maker  of  the  World,  who 
"  founded  it  upon  the  seas  and  established  it  upon 
the  floods."  We  cannot  but  feel  the  full  force  and 
felicity  of  those  opening  words,  in  which  the  Decla- 
ration speaks  of  our  assuming  among  the  powers  of 
the  earth,  "  that  separate  and  equal  station  to  which 
the  laws  of  Nature  and  of  Nature's  God  entitle 


I  spoke,  Mr.  Mayor,  at  the  outset  of  this  Oration, 
of  "A  Century  of  Self-Government  Completed." 
And  so,  in  some  sort,  it  is.  The  Declaration  at 
Philadelphia  was,  in  itself,  both  an  assertion  and  an 
act  of  self-government;  and  it  had  been  preceded,  or 
was  immediately  followed,  by  provisions  for  local 
self-government  in  all  the  separate  Colonies ;  — 
Massachusetts,  New  Hampshire,  and  South  Carolina, 
conditionally,  at  least,  having  led  the  way.  But  we 

may  not  forget  that  six  or  seven  years  of  hard  fight- 

10 


74  ORATION. 

ing  are  still  to  intervene  before  our  Independence  is 
to  be  acknowledged  by  Great  Britain;  and  six  or 
seven  years  more  before  the  full  consummation  will 
have  been  reached  by  the  adoption  of  the  Federal 
Constitution,  and  the  organization  of  our  National 
System  under  the  august  and  transcendent  Presi- 
dency of  Washington. 

"With  that  august  and  transcendent  Presidency, 
dating,  —  as  it  is  pleasant  to  remember,  —  precisely  a 
hundred  years  from  the  analogous  accession  of  Wil- 
liam of  Orange  to  the  throne  of  England,  our  history 
as  an  organized  Nation  fairly  begins.  When  that 
Centennial  Anniversary  shall  arrive,  thirteen  years 
hence,  the  time  may  have  come  for  a  full  review  of 
our  National  career  and  character,  and  for  a  complete 
computation  or  a  just  estimate  of  what  a  Century  of 
Self-Government  has  accomplished  for  ourselves  and 
for  mankind. 

I  dared  not  attempt  such  a  review  to-day.  This 
Anniversary  has  seemed  to  me  to  belong  peculiarly, 
—  I  had  almost  said,  sacredly,  —  to  the  men  and  the 
events  which  rendered  the  Fourth  of  July  so  mem- 
orable for  ever;  and  I  have  willingly  left  myself  little 
time  for  any  thing  else.  God  grant,  that,  when  the 
30th  of  April,  1889,  shall  dawn  upon  those  of  us  who 
may  live  to  see  it,  the  thick  clouds  which  now  darken 
our  political  sky  may  have  passed  away;  that  whole- 
some and  healing  counsels  may  have  prevailed 


JULY    4,    1876.  75 

throughout  our  land;  that  integrity  and  purity  may 
be  once  more  conspicuous  in  our  high  places;  that 
an  honest  currency  may  have  been  re-established,  and 
prosperity  restored  to  all  branches  of  our  domestic 
industry  and  our  foreign  commerce;  and  that  some 
of  those  social  problems  which  are  perplexing  and 
tormenting  so  many  of  our  Southern  States  may  have 
been  safely  and  satisfactorily  solved! 

For,  indeed,  Fellow  Citizens,  we  cannot  shut  our 
eyes  to  the  fact,  that  this  great  year  of  our  Lord  and 
of  American  Liberty  has  been  ushered  in  by  not  a  few 
discouraging  and  depressing  circumstances.  Appall- 
ing catastrophes,  appalling  crimes,  have  marked  its 
course.  Financial,  political,  moral,  delinquencies  and 
wrongs  have  swept  over  our  land  like  an  Arctic  or 
an  Antarctic  wave,  or  both  conjoined;  until  we  have 
been  almost  ready  to  cry  out  in  anguish  to  Heaven, 
:c  Thou  hast  multiplied  the  nation,  but  not  increased 
the  joy!  "  It  will  be  an  added  stigma,  in  all  time  to 
come,  on  the  corruption  of  the  hour,  and  on  all  con- 
cerned in  it,  that  it  has  cast  so  deep  a  shade  over  our 
Centennial  Festival. 

All  this,  however,  we  are  persuaded,  is  temporary 
and  exceptional,  —  the  result,  not  of  our  institutions, 
but  of  disturbing  causes;  and  as  distinctly  traceable 
to  those  causes  as  the  scoriae  of  a  volcano,  or  the 
debris  of  a  deluge.  Had  there  been  no  long  and 
demoralizing  Civil  War  to  account  for  such  develop- 


76  OBATION. 

ments,  we  might  indeed  be  alarmed  for  our  future. 
As  it  is,  our  confidence  in  the  Republic  is  unshaken. 
We  are  ready  even  to  accept  all  that  has  occurred  to 
overshadow  our  jubilee,  as  a  seasonable  warning 
against  vain-glorious  boastings;  as  a  timely  admoni- 
tion that  our  institutions  are  not  proof  against  licen- 
tiousness and  profligacy,  but  that  "  eternal  vigilance 
is  still  the  price  of  liberty." 

Already  the  reaction  has  commenced.  Already 
the  people  are  everywhere  roused  to  the  importance 
of  something  higher  than  mere  partisan  activity  and 
zeal,  and  to  a  sense  that  something  besides  "big 
wars"  may  be  required  to  "make  ambition  virtue." 
Everywhere  the  idea  is  scouted  that  there  are  any 
immunities  or  impunities  for  bribery  and  corruption ; 
and  the  scorn  of  the  whole  people  is  deservedly  cast 
on  any  one  detected  in  plucking  our  Eagle's  wings 
to  feather  his  own  nest.  Everywhere  there  is  a  de- 
mand for  integrity,  for  principle,  for  character,  as  the 
only  safe  qualifications  for  public  employments,  as 
well  as  for  private  trusts.  Oh,  let  that  demand  be 
enforced  and  insisted  on,  —  as  I  hope  and  believe  it 
will  be, —  and  we  shall  have  nothing  to  fear  for  our 
freedom,  and  but  little  to  regret  in  the  temporary 
depression  and  mortification  which  have  recalled  us 
to  a  deeper  sense  of  our  dangers  and  our  duties. 

Meantime,  we  may  be  more  than  content  that  no 
short-comings  or  failures  of  our  own  day  can  diminish 


JULY    4,    1876.  77 

the  glories  of  the  past,  or  dim  the  brilliancy  of  suc- 
cesses achieved  by  our  Fathers.  We  can  look  back 
upon  our  history  so  far,  and  find  in  it  enough  to  make 
us  grateful;  enough  to  make  us  hopeful;  enough  to 
make  us  proud  of  our  institutions  and  of  our  country ; 
enough  to  make  us  resolve  never  to  despair  of  the 
Republic;  enough  to  assure  us  that,  could  our 
Fathers  look  down  on  all  which  has  been  accom- 
plished, they  would  feel  that  their  toils  and  sacrifices 
had  not  been  in  vain;  enough  to  convince  other 
nations,  and  the  world  at  large,  that,  in  uniting  so 
generously  with  us  to  decorate  our  grand  Exposition, 
and  celebrate  our  Centennial  Birthday,  they  are 
swelling  the  triumphs  of  a  People  and  a  Power  which 
have  left  no  doubtful  impress  upon  the  hundred  years 
of  their  Independent  National  existence. 

Those  hundred  years,  have  been  crowded,  as  we  all 
know,  with  wonderful  changes  in  all  quarters  of  the 
globe.  I  would  not  disparage  or  depreciate  the 
interest  and  importance  of  the  great  events  and  great 
reforms  which  have  been  witnessed  during  their 
progress,  and  especially  near  their  end,  in  almost 
every  country  of  the  Old  World.  Nor  would  I  pre- 
sume to  claim  too  confidently  for  the  closing  Cen- 
tury, that  when  the  records  of  mankind  are  made  up, 
in  some  far-distant  future,  it  will  be  remembered 
and  designated,  peculiarly  and  pre-eminently,  as  The 
American  Age.  Yet  it  may  well  be  doubted, 


78  ORATION. 

whether  the  dispassionate  historian  of  after  years 
will  find  that  the  influences  of  any  other  nation  have 
been  of  farther  reach  and  wider  range,  or  of  more 
efficiency  for  the  welfare  of  the  world,  than  those  of 
our  Great  Republic,  since  it  had  a  name  and  a  place 
on  the  earth. 

Other  ages  have  -had  their  designations,  local  or 
personal  or  mythical,  —  historic  or  pre-historic ;  - 
Ages  of  stone  or  iron,  of  silver  or  gold;  Ages  of 
Kings  or  Queens,  of  Reformers  or  of  Conquerors. 
That  marvellous  compound  of  almost  every  thing 
wise  or  foolish,  noble  or  base,  witty  or  ridiculous, 
sublime  or  profane, — Voltaire, — maintained  that,  in 
his  day,  no  man  of  reflection  or  of  taste  could  count 
more  than  four  authentic  Ages  in  the  history  of  the 
world:  1.  That  of  Philip  and  Alexander,  with  Peri- 
cles and  Demosthenes,  Aristotle  and  Plato,  Apelles, 
Phidias  and  Praxiteles:  2.  That  of  Caesar  and 
Augustus,  with  Lucretius  and  Cicero  and  Livy, 
Yirgil  and  Horace,  Yarro  and  Vitruvius:  3.  That 
of  the  Medici,  with  Michel  Angelo  and  Raphael, 
Galileo  and  Dante:  4.  That  which  he  was  at  the 
moment  engaged  in  depicting,  —  the  Age  of  Louis 
XIY.,  which,  in  his  judgment,  surpassed  all  the 
others ! 

Our  American  Age  could  bear  no  comparison  with 
Ages  like  these,  —  measured  only  by  the  brilliancy 
of  historians  and  philosophers,  of  poets  or  painters. 


JULY    4,    1876.  79 

We  need  not,  indeed,  be  ashamed  of  what  has  been 
done  for  Literature  and  Science  and  Art,  during 
these  hundred  years,  nor  hesitate  to  point  with  pride 
to  our  own  authors  and  artists,  living  and  dead. 
But  the  day  has  gone  by  when  Literature  and  the 
Fine  Arts,  or  even  Science  and  the  Useful  Arts,  can 
characterize  an  Age.  There  are  other  and  higher 
measures  of  comparison.  And  the  very  nation 
which  counts  Voltaire  among  its  greatest  celebrities, 
—  the  nation  which  aided  us  so  generously  in  our 
Revolutionary  struggle,  and  which  is  now  rejoicing 
in  its  own  successful  establishment  of  republican 
institutions,  —  the  land  of  the  great  and  good  La- 
fayette, —  has  taken  the  lead  in  pointing  out  the  true 
grounds  on  which  our  American  Age  may  challenge 
and  claim  a  special  recognition.  An  association  of 
Frenchmen,  —  under  the  lead  of  some  of  their  most 
distinguished  statesmen  and  scholars,  —  has  proposed 
to  erect,  and  is  engaged  in  erecting,  as  their  contri- 
bution to  our  Centennial,  a  gigantic  statue  at  the 
very  throat  of  the  harbor  of  our  supreme  commer- 
cial emporium,  which  shall  symbolize  the  legend 
inscribed  on  its  pedestal,  — "  Liberty  enlightening 
the  World!" 

That  glorious  legend  presents  the  standard  by 
which  our  Age  is  to  be  judged;  and  by  which  we 
may  well  be  willing  and  proud  to  have  it  judged. 
All  else  in  our  own  career,  certainly,  is  secondary. 


80  ORATION. 

The  growth  and  grandeur  of  our  territorial  dimen- 
sions; the  multiplication  of  our  States;  the  number 
and  size  and  wealth  of  our  cities;  the  marvellous 
increase  of  our  population;  the  measureless  extent 
of  our  railways  and  internal  navigation;  our  over- 
flowing granaries;  our  inexhaustible  mines;  our 
countless  inventions  and  multitudinous  industries,  - 
all  these  may  be  remitted  to  the  Census,  and  left  for 
the  students  of  statistics.  The  claim  which  our 
country  presents,  for  giving  no  second  or  subordi- 
nate character  to  the  Age  which  has  just  closed,  rests 
only  on  what  has  been  accomplished,  at  home  and 
abroad,  for  elevating  the  condition  of  mankind;  for 
advancing  political  and  human  freedom;  for  promot- 
ing the  greatest  good  of  the  greatest  number;  for 
proving  the  capacity  of  man  for  self-government;  and 
"  for  "  enlightening  the  world "  by  the  example  of  a 
rational,  regulated,  enduring,  Constitutional  Liberty. 
And  who  will  dispute  or  question  that  claim?  In 
what  region  of  the  earth  ever  so  remote  from  us,  in 
what  corner  of  creation  ever  so  far  out  of  the  range 
of  our  communication,  does  not  some  burden  light- 
ened, some  bond  loosened,  some  yoke  lifted,  some 
labor  better  remunerated,  some  new  hope  for  despair- 
ing hearts,  some  new  light  or  new  liberty  for  the 
benighted  or  the  oppressed,  bear  witness  this  day, 
and  trace  itself  directly  or  indirectly  back,  to  the 
impulse  given  to  the  world  by  the  successful  estab- 


JULY    4,     1876.  81 

lishment  and  operation  of  Free  Institutions  on  this 
American  Continent! 

How  many  Colonies  have  been  more  wisely  and 
humanely  and  liberally  administered,  under  the  warn- 
ing of  our  Revolution!  How  many  Churches  have 
abated  something  of  their  old  intolerance  and  big- 
otry, under  the  encouragement  of  our  religious  free- 
dom! Who  believes  or  imagines  that  Free  Schools, 
a  Free  Press,  the  Elective  Franchise,  the  Rights  of 
Representation,  the  principles  of  Constitutional  Gov- 
ernment, would  have  made  the  notable  progress  they 
have  made,  had  our  example  been  wanting  !  Who 
believes  or  imagines  that  even  the  Rotten  Boroughs 
of  Old  England  would  have  disappeared  so  rapidly, 
had  there  been  no  American  Representative  Re- 
public! And  has  there  been  a  more  effective  influ- 
ence on  human  welfare  and  human  freedom,  since 
the  world  began,  than  that  which  has  resulted  from 
the  existence  of  a  great  land  of  Liberty  in  this 
Western  Hemisphere,  of  unbounded  resources,  with 
acres  enough  for  a  myriad  of  homes,  and  with  a  wel- 
come for  all  who  may  fly  to  it  from  oppression,  from 
every  region  beneath  the  sun  ? 

Let  not  our  example  be  perverted  or  dishonored, 
by  others  or  by  ourselves.  It  was  no  wild  breaking 
away  from  all  authority,  which  we  celebrate  to-day. 
It  was  no  mad  revolt  against  every  thing  like  govern- 
ment. !N~o  incendiary  torch  can  be  rightfully  kindled 
11 


82  ORATION. 

at  our  flame.  Doubtless,  there  had  been  excesses 
and  violences  in  many  quarters  of  our  land,  —  irre- 
pressible outbreaks  under  unbearable  provocations, 
—  "  irregular  things,  done  in  the  confusion  of  mighty 
troubles."  Doubtless,  our  Boston  mobs  did  not 
always  move  K  to  the  Dorian  mood  of  flutes  and  soft 
recorders."  But  in  all  our  deliberative  assemblies,  in 
all  our  Town  Meetings,  in  all  our  Provincial  and 
Continental  Congresses,  there  was  a  respect  for 
the  great  principles  of  Law  and  Order  ;  and  the 
definition  of  true  civil  liberty,  which  had  been  so 
remarkably  laid  down  by  one  of  the  founders  of  pur 
Commonwealth,  more  than  a  century  before,  was, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  recognized,  —  "a  Lib- 
erty for  that  only  which  is  good,  just,  and  honest." 
The  Declaration  we  commemorate  expressly  ad- 
mitted and  asserted  that  w  governments  long  estab- 
lished should  'not  be  changed  for  light  and  transient 
causes."  It  dictated  no  special  forms  of  government 
for  other  people,  and  hardly  for  ourselves.  It  had 
no  denunciations,  or  even  disparagements,  for  mon- 
archies or  for  empires,  but  eagerly  contemplated,  as 
we  do  at  this  hour,  alliances  and  friendly  relations 
with  both.  We  have  welcomed  to  our  Jubilee,  with 
peculiar  interest  and  gratification,  the  representatives 
of  the  nations  of  Europe,  —  all  then  monarchical,  — 
to  whom  we  were  so  deeply  indebted  for  sympathy 
and  for  assistance  in  our  struggle  for  Independence. 


JULY    4,    1876.  83 

We  have  welcomed,  too,  the  personal  presence  of  an 
Emperor,  from  another  quarter  of  our  own  hem- 
isphere, of  whose  eager  and  enlightened  interest  in 
Education  and  Literature  and  Science  we  had 
learned  so  much  from  our  lamented  Agassiz,  and 
have  now  witnessed  so  much  for  ourselves. 

Our  Fathers  were  no  propagandists  of  republican 
institutions  in  the  abstract.  Then-  own  adoption  of 
a  republican  form  was,  at  the  moment,  almost  as 
much  a  matter  of  chance  as  of  choice,  of  necessity 
as  of  preference.  The  Thirteen  Colonies  had,  hap- 
pily, been  too  long  accustomed  to  manage  their  own 
affairs,  and  were  too  wisely  jealous  of  each  other, 
also,  to  admit  for  an  instant  any  idea  of  centraliza- 
tion ;  and  without  centralization  a  monarchy,  or  any 
other  form  of  arbitrary  government,  was  out  of  the 
question.  Union  was  then,  as  it  is  npw,  the  only 
safety  for  liberty;  but  it  could  only  be  a  constitutional 
Union,  a  limited  and  restricted  Union,  founded  on 
compromises  and  mutual  concessions ;  a  Union  recog- 
nizing a  large  measure  of  State  rights,  —  resting 
not  only  on  the  division  of  powers  among  legislative 
and  executive  departments,  but  resting  also  on  the 
distribution  of  powers  between  the  States  and  the 
Nation,  both  deriving  their  original  authority  from 
the  people,  and  exercising  that  authority  for  the 
people.  This  was  the  system  contemplated  by 
the  Declaration  of  1770.  This  was  the  system  ap- 


84  OKATION. 

proximated  to  by  the  Confederation  of  1778-81. 
This  was  the  system  finally  consummated  by  the 
Constitution  of  1789.  And  under  this  system  our 
great  example  of  self-government  has  been  held  up 
before  the  nations,  fulfilling,  so  far  as  it  has  ful- 
filled it,  that  lofty  mission  which  is  recognized 
today,  as  w  Liberty  enlightening  the  World !  " 

Let  me  not  speak  of  that  example  in  any  vain- 
glorious spirit.  Let  me  not  seem  to  arrogate  for  my 
country  any  thing  of  superior  wisdom  or  virtue. 
Who  -will  pretend  that  we  have  always  made  the 
most  of  our  independence,  or  the  best  of  our  liberty? 
Who  will  maintain  that  we  have  always  exhibited  the 
brightest  side  of  our  institutions,  or  always  entrusted 
their  administration  to  the  wisest  or  worthiest  men? 
Who  will  deny  that  we  have  sometimes  taught  the 
world  what  to  avoid,  as  well  as  what  to  imitate;  and 
that  the  cause  of  freedom  and  reform  has  sometimes 
been  discouraged  and  put  back  by  our  short-com- 
ings, or  by  our  excesses?  Our  Light  has  been,  at 
best,  but  a  Revolving  Light;  warning  by  its  darker 
intervals  or  its  sombre  shades,  as  well  as  cheering  by 
its  flashes  of  brilliancy,  or  by  the  clear  lustre  of  its 
steadier  shining.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  its  imperfec- 
tions and  irregularities,  to  no  other  earthly  light 
have  so  many  eyes  been  turned;  from  no  other 
earthly  illumination  have  so  many  hearts  drawn  hope 
and  courage.  It  has  breasted  the  tides  of  sectional 


JULY    4,    1876.  85 

and  of  party  strife.  It  has  stood  the  shock  of  for- 
eign and  of  civil  war.  It  will  still  hold  on,  erect 
and  unextinguished,  defying  "  the  returning  wave  "  of 
demoralization  and  corruption.  Millions  of  young 
hearts,  in  all  quarters  of  our  land,  are  awaking  at 
this  moment  to  the  responsibility  which  rests  pecu- 
liarly upon  them,  for  rendering  its  radiance  purer 
and  brighter  and  more  constant.  Millions  of  young 
hearts  are  resolving,  at  this  hour,  that  it  shall  not  be 
their  fault  if  it  do  not  stand  for  a  century  to  come,  as 
it  has  stood  for  a  century  past,  a  Beacon  of  Liberty 
to  mankind!  Their  little  flags  of  hope  and  promise 
are  floating  to-day  from  every  cottage  window  along 
the  roadside.  With  those  young  hearts  it  is  safe. 

Meantime,  we  may  all  rejoice  and  take  courage,  as 
we  remember  of  how  great  a  drawback  and  obstruc- 
tion our  example  has  been  disembarrassed  and  re- 
lieved within  a  few  years  past.  Certainly,  we 
cannot  forget  this  day,  in  looking  back  over  the 
century  which  is  gone,  how  long  that  example  was 
overshadowed,  in  the  eyes  of  all  men,  by  the  exist- 
ence of  African  Slavery  in  so  considerable  a  portion 
of  our  country,  l^ever,  never,  however,  —  it  may 
be  safely  said,  —  was  there  a  more  tremendous,  a 
more  dreadful,  problem  submitted  to  a  nation  for 
solution,  than  that  which  this  institution  involved  for 
the  United  States  of  America.  £Tor  were  we  alone 
responsible  for  its  existence.  I  do  not  speak  of  it  in 


86  ORATION. 

the  way  of  apology  for  ourselves.  Still  less  would  I 
refer  to  it  in  the  way  of  crimination  or  reproach 
towards  others,  abroad  or  at  home.  But  the  well- 
known  paragraph  on  this  subject,  in  the  original 
draught  of  the  Declaration,  is  quite  too  notable  a 
reminiscence  of  the  little  desk  before  me,  to  be  for- 
gotten on  such  an  occasion  as  this.  That  omitted 
clause,  —  which,  as  Mr.  Jefferson  tells  us,  "  was 
struck  out  in  complaisance  to  South  Carolina  and 
Georgia,"  not  without  "  tenderness,"  too,  as  he  adds, 
to  some  "  Northern  brethren,  who,  though  they  had 
very  few  slaves  themselves,  had  been  pretty  consid- 
erable carriers  of  them  to  others,"  -  -  contained  the 
direct  allegation  that  the  King  had  "prostituted  his 
negative  for  suppressing  every  legislative  attempt  to 
prohibit  or  restrain  this  execrable  commerce."  That 
memorable  clause,  omitted  for  prudential  reasons 
only,  has  passed  into  history,  and  its  truth  can  never 
be  disputed.  It  recalls  to  us,  and  recalls  to  the 
world,  the  historical  fact,  —  which  we  certainly  have 
a  special  right  to  remember  this  day,  —  that  not  only 
had  African  Slavery  found  its  portentous  and  per- 
nicious way  into  our  Colonies  in  their  very  earliest 
settlement,  but  that  it  had  been  fixed  and  fastened 
upon  some  of  them  by  Royal  vetoes,  prohibiting  the 
passage  of  laws  to  restrain  its  further  introduction. 
It  had  thus  not  only  entwined  and  entangled  itself 
about  the  very  roots  of  our  choicest  harvests,- 


JULY    4,    1876.  87 

until  Slavery  and  Cotton  at  last  seemed  as  insepa- 
rable as  the  tares  and  wheat  of  the  sacred  par- 
able,—  but  it  had  engrafted  itself  upon  the  very 
fabric  of  our  government.  We  all  know,  the  world 
knows,  that  our  Independence  could  not  have  been 
achieved,  our  Union  could  not  have  been  maintained, 
our  Constitution  could  not  have  been  established, 
without  the  adoption  of  those  compromises  which 
recognized  its  continued  existence,  and  left  it  to  the 
responsibility  of  the  States  of  which  it  was  the 
grievous  inheritance.  And  from  that  day  forward, 
the  method  of  dealing  with  it,  of  disposing  of  it,  and 
of  extinguishing  it,  became  more  and  more  a  prob- 
lem full  of  terrible  perplexity,  and  seemingly  inca- 
pable of  human  solution.  ^ 

Oh,  that  it  could  have  been  solved  at  last  by  some 
process  less  deplorable  and  dreadful  than  Civil  War ! 
How  unspeakably  glorious  it  would  have  been  for  us 
this  day,  could  the  Great  Emancipation  have  been 
concerted,  arranged,  and  iiltimately  effected,  without 
violence  or  bloodshed,  as  a  simple  and  sublime  act  of 
philanthropy  and  justice! 

But  it  was  not  in  the  Divine  economy  that  so 
huge  an  original  wrong  should  be  righted  by  any 
easy  process.  The  decree  seemed  to  have  gone  forth 
from  the  very  registries  of  Heaven : 

"  Cuncta  prius  tentanda,  sed  immedicabile  vulnus 
Ense  rccidendum  est." 


00  ORATION. 

The  immedicable  wound  must  be  cut  away  by  the 
sword!  Again  and  again  as  that  terrible  war  went 
on,  we  might  almost  hear  voices  crying  out,  in  the 
words  of  the  old  prophet :  "  O  thou  sword  of  the 
Lord,  how  long  will  it  be  ere  thou  be  quiet?  Put 
up  thyself  into  thy  scabbard ;  rest,  and  be  still ! " 
But  the  answering  voice  seemed  not  less  audible: 
"  How  can  it  be  quiet,  seeing  the  Lord  hath  given  it 
a  charge?" 

And  the  war  went  on,  —  bravely  fought  on  both 
sides,  as  we  all  know,  —  until,  as  one  of  its  necessi- 
ties, Slavery  was  abolished.  It  fell  at  last  under  that 
right  of  war  to  abolish  it,  which  the  late  John  Quincy 
Adams  had  been  the  first  to  announce  in  the  way  of 
warning,  more  than  twenty  years  before,  in  my  own 
hearing,  on  the  floor  of  "Congress,  while  I  was  your 
Representative.  I  remember  well  the  burst  of  indig- 
nation and  derision  with  which  that  warning  was 
received.  ]^To  prediction  of  Cassandra  was  ever 
more  scorned  than  his,  and  he  did  not  live 
to  witness  its  verification.  But  whoever  else  may 
have  been  more  immediately  and  personally  instru- 
mental in  the  final  result,  —  the  brave  soldiers  who 
fought  the  battles,  or  the  gallant  generals  who  led 
them,  —  the  devoted  philanthropists,  or  the  ardent 
statesmen,  who,  in  season  and  out  of  season,  labored 
for  it,  —  the  Martyr-President  who  proclaimed  it,  — 
the  true  story  of  Emancipation  can  never  be  fairly 


JULY    4,    1876.  89 

and  fully  told  without  the  "  old  man  eloquent,"  who 
died  beneath  the  roof  of  the  Capitol  nearly  thirty 
years  ago,  being  recognized  as  one  of  the  leading 
figures  of  the  narrative. 

But,  thanks  be  to  God,  who  overrules  every  thing 
for  good,  that  great  event,  the  greatest  of  our  Amer- 
ican Age,  —  great  enough,  alone  and  by  itself  to  give 
a  name  and  a  character  to  any  Age,  —  has  been 
accomplished;  and,  by  His  blessing,  we  present  our 
country  to  the  world  this  day  without  a  slave,  white 
or  black,  upon  its  soil !  Thanks  be  to  God,  not  only 
that  our  beloved  Union  has  been  saved,  but  that  it 
has  been  made  both  easier  to  save,  and  better  worth 
saving,  hereafter,  by  the  final  solution  of  a  problem, 
before  which  all  human  wisdom  had  stood  aghast 
and  confounded  for  so  many  generations !  Thanks 
be  to  God,  and  to  Him  be  all  the  praise  and  the  glory, 
we  can  read  the  great  words  of  the  Declaration,  on 
this  Centennial  Anniversary,  without  reservation  or 
evasion:  "We  hold  these  truths  to  be  self-evident, 
that  all  men  are  created  equal,  and  that  they  are 
endowed  by  then*  Creator  with  certain  unalienable 
rights;  that  among  these  are  life,  liberty,  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness."  The  legend  on  that  new 
colossal  Pharos,  at  Long  Island,  may  now  indeed  be, 
"  Liberty  enlightening  the  World !  " 

We  come  then,  to-day,  Fellow  Citizens,  with  hearts 

12 


90  ORATION. 

full  of  gratitude  to  God  and  man,  .to  pass  down  our 
country,  and  its  institutions,  —  not  wholly  without 
scars  and  blemishes  upon  their  front,  —  not  without 
shadows  on  the  past  or  clouds  on  the  future,  —  but 
freed  for  ever  from  at  least  one  great  stain,  and 
firmly  rooted  in  the  love  and  loyalty  of  a  United 
People,  —  to  the  generations  which  are  to  succeed 
us. 

And  what  shall  we  say  to  those  succeeding  gener- 
ations, as  we  commit  the  sacred  trust  to  their  keeping 
and  guardianship? 

If  I  could  hope,  without  presumption,  that  any 
humble  counsels  of  mine,  on  this  hallowed  Anniver- 
sary, could  be  remembered  beyond  the  hour  of  their 
utterance,  and  reach  the  ears  of  my  countrymen  hi 
future  days;  if  I  could  borrow  "the  masterly  pen" 
of  Jeiferson,  and  produce  words  which  should  par- 
take of  the  immortality  of  those  which  he  wrote  on 
this  little  desk;  if  I  could  command  the  matchless 
tongue  of  John  Adams,  when  he  poured  out  appeals 
and  arguments  which  moved  men  from  their  seats, 
and  settled  the  destinies  of  a  Nation ;  if  I  could  catch 
but  a  single  spark  of  those  electric  fires  which  Frank- 
lin wrested  from  the  skies,  and  flash  down  a  phrase, 
a  word,  a  thought,  along  the  magic  chords  which 
stretch  across  the  ocean  of  the  future,  —  what  could 
I,  what  would  I,  say? 

I  could  not  omit,  certainly,  to  reiterate  the  solemn 


JULY    4,    1876.  91 

obligations  which  rest  on  every  citizen  of  this 
Republic  to  cherish  and  enforce  the  great  principles 
of  our  Colonial  and  Revolutionary  Fathers,  —  the 
principles  of  Liberty  and  Law,  one  and  inseparable, 
—  the  principles  of  the  Constitution  and  the  Union. 

I  could  not  omit  to  urge  on  every  man  to  re- 
member that  self-government  politically  can  only  be 
successful,  if  it  be  accompanied  by  self-government 
personally;  that  there  must  be  government  some- 
where; and  that,  if  the  people  are  indeed  to  be  sov- 
ereigns, they  must  exercise  their  sovereignty  over 
themselves  individually,  as  well  as  over  themselves 
in  the  aggregate,  —  regulating  their  own  lives,  resist- 
ing their  own  temptations,  subduing  their  own 
passions,  and  voluntarily  imposing  upon  themselves 
some  measure  of  that  restraint  and  discipline,  which, 
under  other  systems,  is  supplied  from  the  armories  of 
arbitrary  power,  —  the  discipline  of  virtue,  in  the 
place  of  the  discipline  of  slavery. 

I  could  not  omit  to  caution  them  against  the  cor- 
rupting influences  of  intemperance,  extravagance, 
and  luxury.  I  could  not  omit  to  warn  them  against 
political  intrigue,  as  well  as  against  personal  licen- 
tiousness; and  to  implore  them  to  regard  principle 
and  character,  rather  than  mere  party  allegiance,  in 
the  choice  of  men  to  rule  over  them. 

I  could  not  omit  to  call  upon  them  to  foster  and 
further  the  cause  of  universal  Education;  to  give  a 


92  ORATION. 

liberal  support  to  our  Schools  and  Colleges;  to  pro- 
mote the  advancement  of  Science  and  of  Art,  in  all 
their  multiplied  divisions  and  relations;  and  to 
encourage  and  sustain  all  those  noble  institutions  of 
Charity,  which,  in  our  own  land  above  all  others, 
have  given  the  crowning  grace  and  glory  to  modern 
civilization. 

I  could  not  refrain  from  pressing  upon  them  a  just 
and  generous  consideration  for  the  interests  and  the 
rights  of  their  fellow-men  everywhere,  and  an 
earnest  effort  to  promote  Peace  and  Good  Will 
among  the  Nations  of  the  earth. 

I  could  not  refrain  from  reminding  them  of  the 
shame,  the  unspeakable  shame  and  ignominy,  which 
would  attach  to  those  who  should  show  themselves 
unable  to  uphold  the  glorious  Fabric  of  Self-Govern- 
ment  which  had  been  founded  for  them  at  such  a  cost 
by  their  Fathers ;  -  "  Videte,  videte,  ne,  ut  illis  pulcher- 
rimum  fuit  tantam  vobis  imperil  gloriam  relinquere, 
sic  vobis  turpissimum  sit,  illud  quod  accepistis,  tueri 
et  conservare  non  posse  !  " 

And  surely,  most  surely,  I  could  not  fail  to  invoke 
them  to  imitate  and  emulate  the  examples  of  virtue 
and  purity  and  patriotism,  which  the  great  founders 
of  our  Colonies  and  of  our  Nation  had  so  abun- 
dantly left  them. 

But  could  I  stop  there?  Could  I  hold  out  to  them, 
as  the  results  of  a  long  life  of  observation  and  expe- 


JULY    4,    1876.  93 

rience,  nothing  but  the  principles  and  examples  of 
great  men? 

Who  and  what  are  great  men?  *~Woe  to  the 
country,"  said  Metternich  to  our  own  Ticknor,  forty 
years  ago,  "whose  condition  and  institutions  no 
longer  produce  great  men  to  manage  its  affairs." 
The  wily  Austrian  applied  his  remark  to  England  at 
that  day ;  but  his  woe  —  if  it  be  a  woe  —  would  have 
a  wider  range  in  our  time,  and  leave  hardly  any  land 
unreached.  Certainly  we  hear  it  now-a-days,  at 
every  turn,  that  never  before  has  there  been  so 
striking  a  disproportion  between  supply  and  de- 
mand, as  at  this  moment,  the  world  Over,  in  the 
commodity  of  great  men. 

But  who,  and  what,  are  great  men?  "And  now 
stand  forth,"  says  an  eminent  Swiss  historian,  who 
had  completed  a  survey  of  the  whole  history  of 
mankind,  at  the  very  moment  when,  as  he  says,  "  a 
blaze  of  freedom  is  just  bursting  forth  beyond  the 
ocean,"  —  "  And  now  stand  forth,  ye  gigantic  forms, 
shades  of  the  first  Chieftains,  and  sons  of  Gods,  who 
glimmer  among  the  rocky  halls  and  mountain 
fortresses  of  the  ancient  world;  and  you  Conquerors 
of  the  world  from  Babylon  and  from  Macedonia;  ye 
Dynasties  of  Ca3sars,  of  Huns,  Arabs,  Moguls  and 
Tartars;  ye  Commanders  of  the  Faithful  on  the 
Tigris,  and  Commanders  of  the  Faithful  on  the 
Tiber;  you  hoary  Counsellors  of  Kings,  and  Peers 


94  ORATION. 

of  Sovereigns;  Warriors  on  the  car  of  triumph,  cov- 
ered with  scars,  and  crowned  with  laurels;  ye  long 
rows  of  Consuls  and  Dictators,  famed  for  your  lofty 
minds,  your  unshaken  constancy,  your  ungovernable 
spirit;  —  stand  forth,  and  let  us  survey  for  a  while 
your  assembly,  like  a  Council  of  the  Gods!  What 
were  ye?  The  first  among  mortals?  Seldom  can 
you  claim  that  title!  The  best  of  men?  Still  fewer 
of  you  have  deserved  such  praise!  Were  ye  the 
compellers,  the  instigators  of  the  human  race,  the 
prime  movers  of  all  their  works?  Rather  let  us  say 
that  you  were  the  instruments,  that  you  were  the 
wheels,  by  whose  means  the  Invisible  Being  has 
conducted  the  incomprehensible  fabric  of  universal 
government  across  the  ocean  of  tune !  " 

Instruments  and  wheels  of  the  Invisible  Governor 
of  the  Universe!  This  is  indeed  all  which  the 
greatest  of  men  ever  have  been,  or  ever  can  be.  ~No 
flatteries  of  courtiers;  no  adulations  of  the  multi- 
tude; no  audacity  of  self-reliance;  no  intoxications 
of  success;  no  evolutions  or  developments  of  sci- 
ence,—  can  make  more  or  other  of  them.  This  is 
"  the  sea-mark  of  their  utmost  sail,"  —  the  goal  of 
their  farthest  run,  —  the  very  round  and  top  of  their 
highest  soaring. 

Oh,  if  there  could  be,  to-day,  a  deeper  and  more 
pervading  impression  of  this  great  truth  through- 
out our  land,  and  a  more  prevailing  conformity 


JULY    4,    1876.  95 

of  our  thoughts  and  words  and  acts  to  the  lessons 
which  it  involves,  —  if  we  could  lift  ourselves  to 
a  loftier  sense  of  our  relations  to  the  Invisible,  - 
if,  in  surveying  our  past  history,  we  could  catch 
larger  and  more  exalted  views  of  our  destinies 
and  our  responsibilities,  —  if  we  could  realize  that 
the  want  of  good  men  may  be  a  heavier  woe 
to  a  land  than  any  want  of  what  the  world  calls 
great  men  —  our  Centennial  Year  would  not  only 
be  signalized  by  splendid  ceremonials  and  magnifi- 
cent commemorations  and  gorgeous  expositions,  but 
it  would  go  far  towards  fulfilling  something  of 
the  grandeur  of  that  "  Acceptable  Year "  which 
was  announced  by  higher  than  human  lips,  and 
would  be  the  auspicious  promise  and  pledge  of  a 
glorious  second  century  of  Independence  and  Free- 
dom for  our  country! 

For,  if  that  second  century  of  self-government  is 
to  go  on  safely  to  its  close,  or  is  to  go  on  safely  and 
prosperously  at  all,  there  must  be  some  renewal  of 
that  old  spirit  of  subordination  and  obedience  to 
Divine,  as  well  as  human,  Laws,  which  has  been  our 
security  in  the  past.  There  must  be  faith  in  some- 
thing higher  and  better  than  ourselves.  There  must 
be  a  reverent  acknowledgment  of  an  Unseen,  but 
All-seeing,  All-controlling  Ruler  of  the  Universe. 
His  Word,  His  Day,  His  House,  His  Worship,  must 
be  sacred  to  our  children,  as  they  have  been  to  their 


TJCSB    LltSKAK* 


96  ORATION. 

fathers;  and  His  blessing  must  never  fail  to  be 
invoked  upon  our  land  and  upon  our  liberties.  The 
patriot  voice,  which  cried  from  the  balcony  of  yonder 
Old  State  House,  when  the  Declaration  had  been 
originally  proclaimed,  "  Stability  and  Perpetuity  to 
American  Independence,"  did  not  fail  to  add,  "  God 
save  our  American  States."  I  would  prolong  that 
ancestral  prayer.  And  the  last  phrase  to  pass  my 
lips  at  this  hour,  and  to  take  its  chance  for  remem- 
brance or  oblivion  in  years  to  come,  as  the  conclu- 
sion of  this  Centennial  Oration,  and  as  the  sum,  and 
summing  up,  of  all  I  can  say  to  the  present  or  the 
future,  shall  be  :  —  There  is,  there  can  be,  no  Inde- 
pendence of  God  :  In  Him,  as  a  Nation,  no  less  than 
in  Hun,  as  individuals,  "  we  live,  and  move,  and  have 
our  being  !  "  GOD  SAVE  OUR  AMERICAN  STATES  ! 


